...GO GONZO! - Project Mayhem (Blazing Strumpet)
The"No Rest For the Wicked" EP from my new favourite "old" band tore me a new one, so if the appearance of this five-tracker at the end of 2008 didn't have the same initial impact it was only by a small degree.
By all accounts, Project Mayhem have been having a whale of a time since then, carving it up at industry award nights and generally soaking in a reputaiton for alcohol-fueled mayhem. This EP was launched on a paddle steamer (where they and their fans allegedly consumed $5000 worth of free alcohol in an hour.) I'd like to see that. Just don't let them do the catering at your wedding.
The song title "Party Time WA" might be a pointer to a major plank of the Project Mayhem platform.
Bad boy rep apart, all the (musical) pieces are in place for Project Mayhem to crack collective heads further afield but they're obviously proceeding with measured haste. This record has a raw punch and dynamic swagger that's expansive but not polished. Metallic punk for the masses.
"...Go Gonzo!" packs a lot into its 15 minutes. Pub rock and punk meet in "End of the Line" while "Boom Town Rocks" rides a tightly-wound vocal from Ben Watson while raising a middle digit in Angry Young Man style.
There's a bit of room to move inside "Subliminal Mindfuck" and the band makes the most of it with an earnest backbeat and nimble strong-arm guitar. In the end, it's all cock rock and liable to be painted as such by the stupider elements in the mainstream music media, but we don't give a flying fuck about them do we? I'm too busy looking forward to an album. –
The Barman
NO REST FOR THE WICKED - Project Mayhem (self released)
Last time I looked, Subiaco East in laidback Perth, Western Australia, wasn't a hotbed of fist-shaking, epithet-hurling punk rock. There's a strip of cafes and a big football field but it's pretty upper middle-class suburban. But that's from where this seven-track EP emanates. And as low as my tolerance usually is for political commentary mixing it with music because it's all too often like pissing into a hurricane without a raincoat, "No Rest For the Wicked" is a bona fide killer.
Project Mayhem are a quartet that describe themselves as Gonzo Rock and one of them sports a Hunter S. Thompson T-shirt on the inner-tray photo. So I know they're well-read. They sound like a more focussed and intense Dead Kennedys, but with Aussie accents instead of Jello's helium heckle or The Clash with a guitar player who had his chops down and hadn't heard of a flanger pedal.
Musically honed to a diamond hard edge, Project Mayhem have an undeniable streak of passion that's not easy to precisely define. You know it's there - it sticks out like the balls on a bulldog - but it's hard to quantify or get a handle on why it's so obvious. So just go with the flow and get on with the fucking review, OK?
You don't have to be the sharpest tool in the shed to work out this stuff is dynamite. The only tune that doesn't hit the mark is the last one, "Empire US", that's more a slogan than a song. "I'm So Bored With the USA" and all that but that's where 90 percent of punk rock's percursors come from. Still, six out of seven ain't bad.
Opener "Fuck Yeah" is a punk-boy-lusts-after-punk-girl song with a strident intent that leaves you in no doubt that someone means business (or wants to do the business, as the case may be.)
"On the Run" mixes up a bouncy feel with lyrical guitar and fairly bounces off the wall of its padded cell with a melody line Social Distortion would have been proud to have penned, while "Annihilation Song" skids along like a truck with no tyre tread and a possessed psycho at the wheel.
Part of the reason for all this is that Benny Mayhem has range and an undertone of menace to his vocal that sets each song on its ear. You could listen to guitarist Hugh Drockstar for a week too - which isn't to take anything away from the engine room of Bangers on drums and Jesse Deviant on very fluid bass. His bassline carries "Cop Song (Sworn At. Spat At. Kicked & Bashed)" in a way the guitars never could if the bottom end wasn't nailed to the floor like valuable household goods at a kleptomaniac's garage sale.
Look, I got over nasally Brit punk a hundred years ago because half of it sounded the same and most of the rest was no good. I can take or leave a whole slew of thrash bands with fixations on fast tempos and not much else. And hardcore played to a formula disappears up its own arse because it has nowhere else to go. So it's got to be pretty special to get me raving. And Project Mayhem is.
Don't take my word for it. Chase it down and play it before ASIO locks 'em up. I think they mean it. –
The Barman
