I’ve always been embarrassed for old guys who gradually abandoned their once-fervent passion for rock and roll. Then I hit sixty. The sound of hotly tabbed rock bands like Geese, Wednesday and Wet Leg made me wish I was listening to jazz or classical music during the past several years.
It’s not as if I turned soft. The sudden fashionability of yacht-rock- a form of music for people who don’t like music- mystifies me. Instead, only punk-rooted bands like Militarie Gun and Poison the Well satisfy me. I’m pleased to have stumbled upon a similarly dangerously scuzzy recording.
Terraform the Afterlife rings my bell. The new album by Evil Island makes me feel like a hormonal teenager. The sleazy nihilism of songs like “Death by Cop” is precisely the sort of wild-eyed idiocy I want from rock. The bubblegum screamo of “Tiger Baby” and the Stooges update "Melted Heart" are also gloriously dumb.
"T-Hexx" conveys what I imagine the sensation of a first hit of street meth feels like. “Evil Island Death Cult National Anthem” might be a field holler transmitted from hell by shackled members of the New York Dolls. “Blinding Rage” resembles Royal Trux doing a sea shanty. Thanks partly to Evil Island, I won’t be going gentle into that good night.