The Rest Is Distraction is the second album by Girls In Synthesis who are actually two blokes and a girl who formed as a band in 2016.
This album is the bands response to Covid and the political madness we are deeply engulfed in, as well as domestic trauma.
The album opens with It's All Beginning to Change that has a quiet opening before the strafing guitars and insistent beat come in, then you're hit with a shock, it's a bloke singing, not a Girl In Synthesis. As John Linger goes on about how nothing stays the same, the guitars go off and I keep thinking I'm listening to The Shadracks.
Watch With Mother isn't set in Hectors House but is more like they've sampled the squealing wheels of Windy Millers windmills cogs as this story of Domestic unrest flies at you like a plate being thrown across a room. Nicole Pinto's drums never give up on the solid beat, allowing Jim Cubitt to do all sorts of intense stuff on guitar. It ends with the best part of half a minute of distorted noise.
Total Control has John Linger's bass leading things off as this sounds even more similar to The Shadracks garage rock, as he tries to wriggle out of a situation where a member of his family is trying to exert Total Control over his life. This has some great wailing computer games noises like they are zapping aliens in the control room.
Swallowed Pill has twin argumentative vocals, clattering guitars, ready for a fight drumming with the odd backwards tape noise to engulf your brain even more than that pill does.
Screaming is trying to get us out of the void of despair, at all the awful crap surrounding us in this day and age it's reminiscent of Jello Biafra's work with The Melvins.
My Husband is dark tones, a thumping martial beat, almost helicopter sounds, as the disintegration of an awful abusive relationship unfolds. The way the synths interact with the drums sounds like a modern update on Dr Mix & The Remix demolishing Bowies The Supermen.
Cottage Industry is frantic garage punk with one eye on what happens in what used to be known as Cottages, but were in fact public toilets. As this song of hate, violence and despair caused by the closeted man, loses the plot at the people he's meant to love, while have hate sex when he can, I may have twisted this songs meaning a bit, but despair for what's happening is deep in this songs core.
Not As I Do is a title that pretty much sounds like the policy of the British Government the last few years, as the repeating mantra of "It really doesn't matter what I Think Anymore" has all sorts of clattering madness surrounding it, as the despair grows, with a Gang Of Four go mad feel to it.
Lacking Bite has the drums and bass staying good and steady while all round descends into madness as we try to work out why you say this is lacking Bite, as it sounds ferocious enough to me.
Your Prayers Have Changed is an argument waiting to happen, with a main rant that will give Prolapse a run for their money, as the guitars ruin your mind and stop your thought process from finding a way out of all the dread.
The album Closes With To A Fault opens with a bassline stolen from Peter Hook on a disturbing song about child abuse, being sung from the point of view of the abused child, its unsettling and despairing while being told the person abusing them is being generous to a fault, as hard as this is to take it is also compelling and the closing poem may make you shed a tear for the poor abused kid at the heart of this song.
Find Out More at https://www.facebook.com/girlsinsynthesis https://smarturl.it/gisdistraction https://girlsinsynthesis.bandcamp.com/album/the-rest-is-distraction
