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Villains - Road to Ruin

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 May 15 2011 at 01:15:06 AM




Lock up your daughters… Eardrums exploding, I was crammed between drums and guitar in an already crammed practice room, on the third hangover of a two-day bender and working on a fourth, while Villains played songs from Road to Ruin. The night before was at an establishment in Sunset Park, BK. Peyton’s Playpen is not a place for frat boys and business types, but more than suitable for that night’s brand of derelicts which included everyone’s main man Teeth. A young woman walked past in high heels. And nothing else. Then they all gathered. They like long hairs. They like $20 dollar bills. On the brass pole a young harlot with ginger hair and cream skin rolled around. A dead ringer for Frank Zito at the edge of the stage fondling her ass like it was the Stanley Cup. She hid her annoyance well. It could have even been the performance of her career. But it’s doubtful that awards wait in her future, not even of the AVN sort. Doomed to the accolades of NY sleaze, she will never get the fame that is due.

And probably neither will Villains. The general herd of sheep doesn’t want their sensibilities offended. They can handle arty faux intellectualism disguised in black or ambient or atmospheric “metal”, i.e. Krallice or certain other current New York bands making the rounds at Scion fest. Just don’t spill beer on anyone’s jacket. Also, don’t tell the crowd you hope they will all get AIDS, or throw the mike stand at them like a spear. Don’t leer at their women. Don’t make an album like Road to Ruin that is not easily explainable or digestible. The vocals on RTR’s first track, scrowling overlaid with speaking, makes it known from the start that Villains probably hate you. Hey guys, you could maybe get invited to start tour blogs on the hottest sites if you put on some costumes. Or if Desecrator at least pretended to like people when he crawled out of his cave after dark on Satan Island. You could maybe get some reviews on Pitchfork if Nightstricker didn’t use bass strings like he’s holed up at a shipyard warehouse stitching together a flesh-eating giant built from zombie parts. If Teeth wrote party thrash riffs instead of awesome meth binge carnival rides with Uli J. Roth’s retarded cousin riffs, as on Breathing Brothel, then Villains could have everyone twittering each other’s blogs in thrilled agitation. They could be “New York’s best metal band” if Witchwhipper played constant blasts and didn’t write sleaze patrol lines like “Your panties burst; your bra explodes; all in my head is… your ass with loads.” Which is exactly what Chuck Berry was thinking when he asked, “Who’s that girl standing over by the record machine?” And also probably what Bon Scott was getting at with “Leave on the lace and turn off the light.” But then those guys just don’t/didn’t have the right fashion sense to actually be metal. Right? These are not songs for your workout playlist, for self-improvement, or for saving the planet. There are songs here, to be sure. Good ones. I don’t know if it’s because they eliminated the fifth arm or what (with Desecrator now slinging axe), but on this album the thing, whatever it is, is tighter than on 09’s Lifecode of Decadence.

When Bob Christgoo wrote in a 1975 review of Destroyer that KISS were “equating sex with victimization in a display of male supremacism that glints with humor only at it’s cruelest,” he may as well have been giving his limp dick opinion on Villains. But square old Bob missed the point entirely. It’s not about victimizing, it’s about celebrizing. Villains are the inversion of costumes and theatrics, of beating around the bush and double entendre. Insults and intention revealed. Finally. Villains aren’t panda bears or French poets, they are real life rock ‘n’ rollers. So all my previous faded metaphorical lingo does neither them nor the album any favors. Better to just sum up. Sex, gutters, narcotic violence and land hags. Real life. Not outer space, virtual dimensions, cold grim forests, or psychedelic tampons. Also hangovers can hurt real bad. Either put on a suit and tie and behave, climb the ladder, be content with the job, television, beatings from life and The Man. Or return once more to the trenches of night. Road to Ruin welcomes you.

[Adam Ganderson]

Villains
Road to Ruin
Nuclear War Now!
2011
type: reviews    keywords: metal, pussy, sleaze, lhp048, street metal,   

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