Jumbo’s Killcrane
Carnaval de Carne (Crucial Blast)
by Craig Regala
Too short. Only a schmeedle’d be full up with a 24-minute serving of such goodness. If you are familiar with Crucial Blast, Carnaval… is closer to the side of the label which released discs in conjunction with Berserker Records (R.I.P.). That being blown-up art punk metal drawing on Touch & Go/AmRep ’80s blithering, grunting rocking units like Butthole Surfers (pre-suck), Killdozer, Helmet, Unsane, Janitor Joe, and others blowing SST intensity through grimy arena thunk salted with the twin suckerpunch of Birthday Party and (early) Killing Joke.
Playing it back to back with 2000’s Il Cadavers Eccellente yields an excellent lesson. Jumbo’s Killcrane take their “thing,” tighten the bolts, and emphasize the songs’ groove while laying fills and riffs in its guts to grab your chest. It lets you breathe a bit now and again, just to clamp down boa-constrictor-style when you think you might worm out. In a way, this is what I’d thought woulda come of some of the Seattle groups turn of the ’90s. Hell, I didn’t know all those guys got Neil Young recs along with the Sabbath and Black Flag, and that Neil’d be what stuck. Silly me.
Hollered and drawn-out hardcore-bred vocals butt into classic tempo doom cut up with the tension-release dynamic traceable way back to hard-ass electric blues. To wax nostalgic, this band works the “Loose Nut”/”In My Head”-era Black Flag stuff into the hard, heavy, hard rock that was only punk by association. If you think the Voivod and Entombed covers of “21st Century Schitzoid Man” make sense, or that bands like Craw and Dazzling Killmen were important in the ’90s (they were), spend some money. Rumor is they have a standing offer to play your living room for a hundred sixty bucks, two pizzas, a quart of Jim Beam, and 32 beers. Hell, you waste that much on a good weekend of not getting laid anyway, so as Earnest Angsley says, “the good Lord helps them what helps themselves.” So bring these guys to town, it’s the right thing to do.
(PO Box 364 Hagerstown, MD 21741)
