★★★★
You can judge this one by its cover. That garish pink eyesore, with that awkward, atonal band photo slap bang in the middle?
Yeah, that about sums up the hobbled horror that is Pissed Jean’s new outing, a kitsch, brutal exercise in upsetting snotty-nosed critics and punk purists alike.
In their quest to offer up the most unpleasant tones they can find, the Pennsylvanians have shifted their sound from post-hardcore stylings to what could feasibly be called ‘pig-fuck rock’. Every song sounds like an anthem written to introduce some meth-addicted wrestler as they stagger out into a dive bar to pound the piss from a stranger, and there is a kind of softcore ’80s ugliness to the proceedings.
‘Love Without Emotion’ is the sweaty, latex-clad gimp toiling around in a basement co-owned by Birthday Party-era Nick Cave and David Lee Roth, and ‘I’m A Man’ is Marquis de Sade rewritten by Andy Kaufman, all stilted porn dialogue and rising horror, with author Lindsay Hunter taking on vocal duties to spit out a series of increasingly lewd come-ons.
It’s not nice. None of it is. Nor is it pleasant, or appetising, or ear-wormy, or likeable. But it is unstoppable – as unstoppable as a tumour, or the slow, thick spread of gout.
