RUDIMENTARY PENI - "GREAT WAR" LP

 LULUS:

Rudimentary Peni have returned and it couldn’t feel more right. Blurry and tough are the first two words that came to mind when trying to describe the sound on this latest offering from these legends, a band who have been many things over the years but who remained consistently morose. One from the vault, remaining unreleased for whatever reasons, Great War centres itself around enormous riffs and simple, thumping, drums which have found a way to add drama in spite of (or because of) their restricted approach (ie. being a machine.) It’s clear that their sole role is to hold up and support the titanic punk six stringed incantations, superbly fuzzed out and dirty in tone and delivery - capable of making any and every riff a dirge - which is indeed a most wonderful and righteous stage for Nick Blinko to dim the lights, set the mood, lay down the law, and perform his atrocity show. It’s an undoubtedly aggressive record, yet as the great acts of grey UK misery and sardonicism tend toward, the vocals somehow sit above the din and furore, observing as a snarling, incendiary fly on the wall. If they are taking part in the tumult and the violence it is simply to stoke the flame for their own pleasure or vile curiosity. Great War’s blood-soaked soil is fertile ground in which grows a tree bearing rotten fruit... A tree we’d be wise to eat from, sit beneath in contemplation, cut its limbs for fun or to feed the fire, climb the branches as it stands gnarled and lonely upon a hill to share with the creepy crawlies and crows a wonderful view of the gallows.

SEALED:

Recorded several years ago before Rudimentary Peni engaged in another mysterious hiatus, Great War has finally emerged to kiss the gas-tinged light of a mustered morn. Expanding on the skeletal sounds and subject of 2009’s “Wilfred Owen” single the band has seen fit to concentrate on a more mechanized approach doing away with even more of the humanizing aspects in their music this time delivering ten painful familiar shards fraught with brittle anxiety and anguished simplicity. Great War cements new phase in the ever-crawling metamorphic madness that is Rudimentary Peni. The record comes with brand new Nick Blinko Artwork on the sleeve and Inner Sleeve.