The Spitters

Sun To Sun (PCP)
by Lex Marburger

Anyone who says that lightning can’t strike twice is a fuckin’ idiot. When originality and genius happen, it’s only a matter of time before someone adds to it. And when the time between the two is large enough, it doesn’t sound like a rip off. Case in point: When Nick Cave’s Birthday Party hit the scene in the late ’80s, they started something that nobody could match. They found an outlet for the more disturbing parts of the soul. When you put intricate, morbid, tightly played music together with howls from the depths of hell, you know you’ve got something. The Birthday Party was a unique musical experience, standing alone, uncatagorizable. Now, after all these years, we have The Spitters, or The Birthday Party: Part Two.

But they aren’t a rip off; they might not even know Cave’s stuff. But take some of the more disconcerting beats of Gang of Four, add a little Melvins lurch and shiver, bring to a boil, pour on liberal amounts of the Birthday Party, and watch out! I haven’t stopped listening to Sun to Sun since I got it. Mark Ashwill’s vocals are the sound of an agonized soul being torn from its drunken body by Choronzon, the Dæmon of Chaos, and eaten alive. It’s the sound of a thousand night terrors, bloodsweat on the brow of the DT victim, the schizophrenic’s tortured pleas. The music thunders and rages its way across the body of a dying giant, scraping around a sonic bathtub, smashing cockroaches with ten-pound mallets. There’s no way to stop this music – it lives on its own, feasting on Ashwill’s sweat and spit, and it stumbles around the stage, looking for things to crush. To top it off, the last track is a 12-minute, rumbling ambient piece that sounds like it could be Mick Harris’ (Scorn) and Bill Laswell’s mutant child.