Frankie and the Witch Fingers

I’ve had this new platter from Frankie and the Witch Fingers rolling around my brain for a little while now and its certainly among the best they’ve ever battered into our collective brains. A lineup change finds the band fresh and foaming, ready to embrace the concept album and chomp down on the ragged strands of rhythm at the same time. There’s a renewed sense of movement, imparted both by the band’s live to tape take in the studio and some time with a toy box full of percussive augmentations that give the album some shimmy between the shred. As we enter the alternate reality of Monster Eating People Eating Monsters… the band takes hold of the listeners’ psyche with both hands and shakes the soul like a gourd, pounding out polyrhythms in morse code warnings that reverberate through the temporal plane. Ozone crackles in anguished thick plumes from sweat soaked amps and a mantra of metamorphosis glows from the walls in blacklight brilliance.

There’s a sense of menace at work taking over for the euphoria and grind from past albums. It’s creeping through the bottom-end burnout and permeating the guitar scorch. The band comes as hard as they ever have but this time the turbulence is unrelenting, slipping from one song to another in seamless careen. The band’s been leading up to the album with a bevy of visuals that chew at altered states and consciousness evolution, a constant theme throughout the LP. Should we ll be so lucky to be rendered through the simulator in the Witch Fingers’ world. Sadly we’re all stuck here on the most malevolent time line waiting for the escape hatch to blow. Until then, it’s a fine time to let the cycle of scorch that the Witch Fingers lay down here lead the way into some sort of sonic oblivion. I recommend a few repeat rides on this one.

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