Review Summary: Short-staffed.
The bands just came teeming out of the woodwork, it seemed. Sometime around ’98 I got ahold of the first Orange Goblin record, and it was such a trippy, heavy revelation – like the heavier Sub Pop bands had been swirled in with Sabbath and Hawkwind and all those 70s psych gems that nobody ever talked about. Then in the blink of an eye it seemed, scores of new bands were sawing on E strings, eschewing the cheese of traditional metal, vibrating nose hairs with husky vocals, Orange amps and beards flying in every direction. Like every scene, a lot of it was forgettable – but the age of dial-up internet seemed to intensify the rise of stoner rock, music blogs and downloads cropping up daily with oodles of info on these mysterious bands.
SC’s Throttlerod was one of scores of bands swirling into view around the turn of the millennium, appearing on some kind of live compilation we got ahold of (Death Row Reunion) with a bunch of Pentagram-related bands. Their debut on Underdogma was lost to me in my own collection, buried under piles of like-minded releases. But one of the benefits of an obscenely large music collection is the grab-bag effect, anything worth having is worth hearing – even if it’s 15 years later. At this early stage, it’s four guys spreading the gospel of the Amphetamine Reptile catalog, and the good work Eddie Spaghetti (Supersuckers). On the back of the CD insert, all four guys are wearing (to quote a famous song) “The shorts that should not be,” but first impressions aren’t everything.
Matt Whitehead’s vocals are serviceable at best, not the type of singer to be tackling the Freddie Mercury catalog anytime soon, but in the true spirit of DIY and punk rock ethos and approachability and feeling those Orange amps blow your hair back at the live shows, it’s a minor concern. Many of the riffs start off hard panned to one side, like they used to do in the bitchin’ years of Marlboros, wide collars, and Dick Nixon. Something like “Wifebeater” could be the prototypical Throttlerod track at this early stage, ballsy string-scraping rifferama with stops and starts, second guitar wailing away from jump street, Jon McNabb’s tight cymbal crashes and , Whitehead braying,
“I had a feeling, you’d throw it away” – are we talking about laundry or something more? The cowbell comes out without a hint of shyness in “The Platter”, an absolutely frantic riff of ponderous heaviness that seems to transfer its energy to the drums around the midpoint to marvelous effect. There’s a hint of Texas-style boogie stitched into the patchwork of “Three Rings”. “Little Wave” may have the strongest riff on the record, built on a bassline played like a guitar as the cowbells are re-ignited, Whitehead screaming,
“One finger – little wave!”
The performances are strong, everybody playing their asses off from ultra-fuzzed basslines to throat-croaks to swelling guitar harmonies, but many have the same stompin’ tempo, and it all kind of runs together unfortunately. Bits and pieces are memorable, a chorus here, a clever line there – but the band doesn’t fully hog-tie the redneck noise on this record. That would come with 2003’s COC-esque opus “Hell and High Water".
Still, a hell of a noise for a bunch of guys in shorts.
