"When I was a boy I wanted to be an astronaut!" ("NASA vs ESA") is a line that tells us a lot of important things about CHICKENHAWK. For one, Paul Michael Astick (Guitar/Vocals) Ryan Thomas Clark - (Bass/Some Vocals), Matthew Graham John Reid (Drums) and Robert James Stephens, (Guitar), are no longer boys. For another, they have minds that always wanted to go FURTHUR.
The CHICKENHAWK sound has been growing and developing for several years now. and the result is a unique set of very densely woven material that promises not to wear out, however many times you put it on.
For me, it's very unusual to want to keep such aggressively loud stuff on repeat. But this avant-metal cauldron of invention, savagery and self-astonishing intelligence has converted me in one 43 minute splurge of creative excess to the possibility that metal riffage and post-adolescent frenzy can be utterly mad, very rewarding and and a whole lot of fun besides. Twelve (mostly) short songs keep the intensity intact across the whole album.
It opens with a 70s disco octave bass that emulates a Nile Rogers production of Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit In The Sky". Happily things start going wrong pretty quickly, with subtle noises-off and a howling vocal as the tempo starts to go very drunk-robot before dying into the entirely more rampant riffage of "Piglosaur". This sounds exactly like the title says it should, greasy, ugly and comically scary.
"The Let Down" blasts in at ultra volume and maximum riff. The vocal has some Robert Plant style in it and the band throw in a bewildering set of red meat options before finishing a wildly improbable fade on some kind of Clubland organ chord that appears out of nowhere.
There is a touch of Jansch and Renbourn in "Minus Infinity Killswitch", with some savagely beautiful effects that slice the Celtic-jazz acoustic opening and spill out the guts of dynamic riff shifting for the closing three minutes. It really takes the breath away.
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Duel-a-Tron seems to open with Casio madness and dive into Deliverance-style yeehah guitar. It subverts the mood for 44 seconds so that "Kerosene" can flood the speakers and rattle the neighbours with aggressive tempo changes and stuttering guitar: it's nostalgic for METALLICA and still wanting to stay up all night causing trouble with OXES. As the central track, it's a convincing peak, with well charged voices and plenty of ostentatious guitar over properly massive drumming and vast shoulders of bass. Notice, in particular, a single use of rock's melodramatic stop-for-a-heartbeat-after a cheeky drum solo then-crash-in-even-louder-thing. It works a treat and, like so many of the treats on the album, it works best for only being done once.
"Gravitronic Liferay Table" keeps that muscular thing rolling in waves for another six minutes. After another burst of enthusiastic yelling and stomping on "Mandarin Grin", "The Pin" goes finely calibrated and technical while (at least) two voices scream the woes of the world and CHICKENHAWK'S long gestation starts to make itself felt. This band has complexity-stamina.
"Bottle Rocket" closes things by racing off at double tempo with pit-energising guitar lines and (brilliantly done!) a whispered vocal that hands over to screamed repetitions of "BOTTLE ROCKET!!". Obviously.
In short: articulate flagellation of the non-post-metal idiom, recommended to sceptics and devotees in equal measure.
www.myspace.com/chickenhawk
www.last.fm/chickenhawk
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