Verbena

Into the Pink (Capitol)
by Jamie Kiffel

Follow the melancholy curve of the dragon’s tail from the first piano-minor key track… right up his scaly body and into his waiting pink mouth. Guitar grinds lengthen and insist as the disc rounds the twisting scales of this long serpent, winding legends of gunshot wounds, obsession, sin, and diesel-tongued lust lines left from knights who died along the slaying route. “Bang, bang… we’re gonna kill the king!” shouts Scott Bondy in a voice nasal enough to match his mouth-full-of-machine guns guitars. ”

I found my long-lost sister/ She lives inside my head” shouts Bondy on the vocal attack, evoking Nirvana’s Incesticide (after all, producer Dave Grohl stirred this monster from his cage), but also the filthy-sharp scales of Alice in Chains’ Dirt – though this slides along the beast’s skin (a good and dirty ride) – while Dirt exhumes the damn thing. Lick on depressive obsession without eating it whole; the dragon snorts a filthy welcome when you’re done – but grins without eating you alive. All the better to slide back on that reptile and enjoy getting monster-faced again and again.