More Brains, Dear?

There are those who attempt through music to pinpoint exactly what makes us all human, what makes us all feel and aspire and through that knowledge to bring all of us, regardless of age, creed, nationality and/or socio-economic group, to the same point of communal transcendence and fulfilment.  This is, I feel, a truly noble striving.

Then there are those who just want to sing songs about space zombies eating brains, drinking, being abducted and victimized by sinister cults and alcohol-induced throwing up, but mostly about zombies in space.  Hell yeah! Sign me right up for this entirely ignoble striving, Igor!

To be fully honest there’s
Not much to recollect
One second I’m relaxing
The next one I’m fully wrecked
Can someone please tell me where on
Earth did all of this spew come from?

Welcome to Municipal Waste The Fatal Feast: The Waste In Space, from 2012.  I stumbled across Municipal Waste after getting a track called ‘Unleash The Bastards!’ on a compilation, years ago and then downloading The Art of Partying because it just didn’t seem to exist on vinyl* – it is my all-time favourite album that I don’t own a physical copy of.  The Waste, as we fans call them, have rebooted the Crossover sound of bands like D.R.I and the Crumbsuckers – channelling a punkier edge and a lot of humour into their sound.  That’ll suit me fine.  The fact that it’s a cool gatefold LP on lurid orange vinyl with a poster of the cover art**, did its chances of being bought no harm at all.

The story behind the rather wonderfully gory cover is told on ‘The Fatal Feast’ which has some keyboards on it. I know, I know! But, back on safer thrash metal ground, it also features some guest vocals by Nuclear Assault’s John Connelly.  Spoiler Alert: Decades into a space voyage the crew get a bit peckish …

Decades passing, rations low,
The crew’s tensions are about to blow.
Let’s take our leader and turn him into meat,
And introduce him to our fatal feast.

Now I’m no intergalactic Human Resources expert, but I’m pretty sure that sort of workplace behaviour would earn you a bit of a reprimand, or possibly even a gross misconduct disciplinary hearing^.  So my advice would be to not try that in your own job, or maybe just don’t leave any witnesses (pretty sure that’s me exonerated when one of you loon balls goes loopy at work tomorrow).

From the cover on in, The Fatal Feast: The Waste In Space is the equivalent of getting your best mates around for a beer, pizza and horror movie night.  Not only that but we’re talking the cheapest beer the human gut can tolerate and only horror movies with at least the number 3 at the end of their title, we don’t want any trail-blazing edginess here – we’re just after gore and possibly a quick sighting of a boob, or two*^, the theory (developed by me at university, referred to in academia as 1537’s Second Law) is that as horror franchises continue they bother less and less with exposition and get quicker into the bits vile adolescents really want to see.  Lets face it, its therapeutic to park your mind somewhere else sometimes and just pretend to be 15 again.

There’s a whole lotta silliness going on here, but don’t be fooled there is some righteous precision playing too – when the band hit a real groove, as on the vinyl bonus track ‘Eviction Party’, or ‘Residential Disaster’ everything comes together and its like being hit by an iron fist in an iron glove.  Hard, in your soft bits.  In fact I particularly like the egalitarian, socio-conscious lyrics of the latter,

Fear strikes the masses
No separate classes
Facing us results in the whooping of asses

It’s the sort of thing that Pete Seeger spent 70 years trying to convey and Municpal Waste deliver with better down-tuned guitars and kick-ass soloing.  The Waste don’t go in for too much extensive soloing which I like, although there is a great one in ‘Authority Complex’, I suspect as a legacy of their crossover forebears.

Overall this LP is definitely a faster one than the other Waste ones I’ve heard and suffers for it a little in places when they get all land-speed-record-attempt on us, the production doesn’t quite deliver the clarity of some of their previous ones either.  But, that said, this is a damn good time if you want to let your inner surly teen out for a run around occasionally.  Plus how can you resist an LP with tracks on it called ‘Covered In Sick/The Barfer’ and ‘Crushing Chest Wound’?

So what can I get you? more pizza? beer? brains? The Fatal Feast: The Waste In Space sorted.

509 Down.

*I did once see a picture disc of it once on eBay going for over £100.

**I have yet to persuade Mrs 1537 that it will provide a perfect accent for our dining room.

^depending on whether it was a first offence or not.  For further reading see Waste.A et.al (eds) Intergalactic HR: Off World Disciplinary Procedures (2013), Venusian Press.

*^research shows that boobs often seem to live in pairs, it is currently thought that they mate for life and nest accordingly, but that hasn’t been proven yet; man scientists are still working on it.