Balaclavas— Snake People CD

Catalog No.

KNIFE017CD

Released

October 18, 2011

Tracklist

1. Legs Control
2. Wrong Side of the Bars
3. Shit Meridian
4. Snake People
5. Down and Loose
6. Hard Pose
7. Standard Channels
8. Find Out For Yourself

Reviews

• The pitch-black noise rock of Balacalavas only continues to mature on their sophomore LP “Snake People”. Much like“Roman Holiday” the band relies on the core rhythmic drive of dummer Charlie Patranella and a complete disregard for the trappings of contemporary rock music. The highly stylized music on “Roman Holiday” is continued on without missing a beat. In addition to heroic gothic drumming, the music still echoes with the sounds of grinding guitar feedback, doomy bass lines and synth tones buzzing with the ominous oscillations of a chorus of sizzling tesla coils. Tracks on “Snake People” vary in length from two minutes and sixteen seconds to over nine minutes. “Snake People”, the latter of these two, completely disregards structure. Rim drumming like “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” combined with Tyler’s dramatic cries makes for a feverish nightmare-scape that would make Peter Murphy shit his pants. This staple track also includes a number of delightfully Cabaret Voltaire tape samples in the beginning, only adding to mood. This is not to say that the shorter tracks are not just as good. “Down and Loose”, the album’s second shortest song, is highly organized and structured with cryptic goth-rock vocals like, “tight black leather boots, smoking cigarettes, with no regrets”. Even on the less lengthy tracks, Balaclavas sets the mood. Grade: A

  —Free Press Houston

• Dull Knife picks up the second album from post-punk doomsayers Balaclavas. The Texas crew hovers perpetually in the darkest corners, slinking with knives and shades equally drawn. The band has an aptitude for weaving insistent rhythms, twisting with sickness, with a nail scratched doom-punk that befits titles like "Shit Meridian." The second time around the tape spool hasn't left the boys any less intense. Snake People gnaws on bad vibes like raw wire, spits blood and shrugs it off like just another day. Their fist record always felt like it should come from a place more barren than Houston and the second installment takes no detours in that respect. This is the soundtrack to Flint, MI or Gary, IN; the kind of places where the sun only occasionally shines through the smoke to bake you to a miserable crisp. This is the sound of pavement stretching to chain link for miles. Still no matter where they're from and what's channeled into it, the band have found a way to record the gnash of teeth well.

  —Raven Sings the Blues

• I do a lot of the writing for this blog on a laptop that has probably seen better days. The exterior is scratched, dented and what have you from numerous drops and/or beatings received from myself out of frustration. The front of the CD tray has been ripped off (again in an act of frustration) after it stopped working completely. It’s a wonder how this thing still works…but so long as it can handle the simple tasks of word processing then I am fine. I bring this up because it honestly makes me think some about Snake People, the latest album from Houston, Texas’ Balaclavas. Their music has always been something vaguely helped along with electronics, tape loops, etc. But it’s always been presented in a way that allows me to believe that these sounds were created on something as lowly and trashed as the very laptop I’m using; used to soundtrack a world of ruins complete with a black clouded backdrop or landfills overflowing with mountains of discarded obsolete technology. The bands previous album Roman Holiday was a big hit with me last year and many others as it ended up. The mixture of atonal no-wave inspired guitar damage with big archaic dub influenced beats ended up being a magnificent pairing and one that needed no help painting a bleak picture. As Balaclavas did there, they bring it all back for another round with Snake People, once again brought to us by the resurrected Dull Knife label. I honestly felt it would be a challenge to follow up Roman Holiday, as following and listening through their discography seemed to hint at nearing a peak with the album. And really, after hearing not much of anything concerning the band after the release of the the album, it was beginning to seem like it would certainly end up being just that. Alas a return was announced earlier this year and with Snake People the group takes a not so unexpected turn towards their beat driven/dub-punk influence with less of the hypnotic looping drums that seemed to be behind many of the tracks on Roman Holiday. Instead, they are split up between the thick punches of something more industrialized and the faint haunting churns of buzzing/humming. As a band that seemingly dabbled with the idea plenty in the past, the increase seeps in naturally and likely has propelled Snake People to higher level of induced fear and dread that they’ve managed to achieve before. Easily one of my favorite bands going currently. Please do give them a listen.

  —Built on a Weak Spot

• Roman Holiday completely ruined us last year. And by that I mean it in the way that a certain obsidian monolith, you know the one, disengages and rewires the conscience of bone-flinging early man. A piece of music that, if you’ve not yet listened to it, puts an entirely new spin on post-punk as you know it. Best believe their debut full-length also made our humble ‘100 Albums of 2010’ list, snuggled ever-so tightly between Waka Flocka and Electric Wizard. On to the next one! As far as I’m concerned, Balaclavas have found the pulse yet again with 2011’s Snake People, ironing out the few blemishes on the last release but, more importantly, forging a prophetic record to play in accompaniment to the human race’s almost certain plunge into extinction. The splintering wheel of time, that torture rack, slows. Guitars become detuned and voices estranged as a synthesizer drone constricts each song’s resonance. Stylistically speaking, Snake People is more excruciating an album, in a clamorous no-wave sort of way, while also keeping up a haunting presence, through electromagnetic palpitations, on some forsaken dancefloor. No doubt you’ll hear some heavy Bauhaus influence imbued with the clanky industrialism of Einstürzende Neubauten scattered throughout as vocals get sucked out into preservation tanks on “Shit Meridian” and “Snake People” or undulate over strings on “Wrong Side of the Bars” and “Down and Loose”. These Houston misanthropes are the real deal so get to know them as the record gets an official release, today.

  —Mishka NYC

• Houston, TX hit some record high temps this year, but you’d never know it from listening to the music of Balaclavas, a post-punk trio with ice in their veins, as opposed to their hometown’s prerequisite rattlesnake spit and barbeque sauce. I liked their last album, Roman Holiday, a whole lot, but haven’t come back to it lately – Balaclavas are understated and workmanlike enough that they can be easy to forget about. They’re also really good, though, as evidenced by Snake People. I’m hearing a mix of Public Image Ltd. and The VSS, if such an amalgam existed in today’s techno-accepting underground, and they wear their style well. Electronic programming and dubby bass collide into something a Nick Cave fan would enjoy, carving out a pretty unique little hole in a music scene filled with sub-sub-genres for every conceivable sound. Only eight songs, but there’s no superfluent material here; Balaclavas know better than to waste our time or theirs. Missed their last tour, and I plan on correcting that when they hit the road next.

  —Yellow Green Red

• Houston’s dark riders return and remind the rest of the nation/world/cosmos that They Are Not Fucking Around. Snake People is the trio’s second full-length, and the eight songs within use the rest of Balaclavas’ roomy, drunk/demented back catalog as a springboard to dive even deeper into the still, opaque waters of dread and mystery. It’s quite impressive how the group wrangles dub elements, like the thick bass that initially poked out here and there on previous efforts, beyond window dressing into heavy, ominous moods, worthy to stand at least next to first-gen miscegenators like PiL or the Slits. There is a real sense of invention all the way through the record, as the Bali Boys have their way with a humid, almost-oppressive mix of Gothic overtones, mid-to-late ‘90s Sta-Prest/black hair dye creepin’ vamp, trashy moves, and supple electronics work, which can range anywhere from smart-ass cage rattling (“Legs Control,” “Down and Loose”) to something akin to long lost Crispy Ambulance sides (“Hard Pose,” “Shit Meridian”) to out-and-out spaghetti Western-meets-razorblades sulk (“Wrong Side of the Bars”). The title track is nine minutes of feverish delirium, howling at a slow and liberating transformation, which can only be topped by the divebombing synths and industrial club menace of “Standard Channels.” It may take a few listens to uncover the venom buried within these tracks – and closer “Find Out For Yourself” certainly helps it to go down smooth – but there is no cure, no resolution for what might happen if and when you fall under Balaclavas’ sinister spell. Each song here could be the work of a slightly different band, with enough going for it to spin off an entire album’s worth of material. Outstanding work from a band that’s not content with its past.

  —Still Single