Sometimes you’ve just got to manifest miracles through stubbornness. Like when I kept standing in the centre of the first row watching a band from Leeds with a scribbled penis in their logo and despite all odds somehow survived the whole show without being hit by gobs of spit, half-empty beer cans or ball-sweat flavoured handshakes of their frontman. Yes, The Shits are as delightfully disgusting as their name promises.
But while in spirit they are so abrasively and confrontionally Punk that it makes you feel like being swallowed by a Jabba-sized blob of pure ick that spews you out covered in pungent goo and blistering warts, their music only pretends to be uncontrollably chaotic and even a little half-assed. Actually, although these guys know exactly what they’re doing, their assault of devastating and self-depreciating brutal repetition couldn’t be more targeted.
A Shits song needs one dirty addictive riff, one stomping beat, deafening walls of Noise around both and vocals which hate themselves as much as they despise the listener. The pummeling result has such a primal energy that it defies strict categorization: Whether you call it Crust-Punk, Hardcore, Noise-Rock, Sludge or Rocket Recordings-style Heavy Psych really only depends on your personal horizon and is probably all equally true.
Three years after the unsparing truth bomb You’re a Mess The Shits’ premise hasn’t radically changed – and claiming that it has been refined may technically be accurate, yet would probably paint a false picture, in which the band sounds more polished now. But no, eff that! Of course the contrary is the case: This Diet of Worms is made of raw, stringy, rotten meat that shoots through your guts even more relentlessly now.
Still fittingly on the same same label roster as Gnod and Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs this album both energizes me with the filthiest Rock’n’Roll attitude of Belgian’s La Muerte and crushes my soul with a bleakness close to Saw Throat’s Inde$troy. Needless to say - I love it.
If you dig the messed up grandchildren of The Stooges vibe of Backengrillen, here’s the appropriate neighbour for their debut in your record collection. Seriously, these gangs should absolutely tour together. Urgh, what a beautifully yukky idea!
