Akimbo – Navigating The Bronze – Review

akimbo200Akimbo

Navigating The Bronze (Alternative Tentacles)
By Craig Regala

Hammering hard rock in the way post-hardcore kickass whatnot world. Reminds me of a line in Joe Carducci’s Enter Naomi, SST and All That book wherein Joe recounts seeing The Stains guitar player throw a brutalized acid rock bloodletting solo in front of the punker set pre-’80 when that sorta shit just wasn’t done. This record is fallout from that little crease in orthodox behavior. Akimbo ball up all the tense, vicious, drugged, stomping and stunned moments from hard rock through the ages; crawling up from The Who through the early ’70s fallout of Dust-Granicus-Pentagram/Stooges to the Pistols/Pere Ubu/Chrome/Motörhead late ’70s. From there, jump into the Bad Brains, Buttholes, Black Flag, Fang, and Flipper; all fertile loam for the coming “alternative rock” world about to be re-rocked via Seattle with its dope meth cut with Unsane, Jesus Lizard, Slint, and Kepone. Ya know, the good shit.

Navigating The Bronze moves through tempos and densities with the same tone and feel, the sign of a good band. Their identity is intact and nothing sounds out of place. It’s like any 40 minutes of your life: You do a triple shot to chase a beer, go outside to smoke, throw a bottle at some dick that just sideswiped your mirror, call yer brother in Iraq, and then find a “lost” eight-ball in the coin pocket of somebody’s pants.

Overall, what sticks is these guys take the big brawling kickass thing and pile on tons of torn up T&G/AmRep/Skin Graft art grunt to give it genre-busting impact. My mix tape has ‘m slurred between High On Fire, Craw, Pissed Jeans, Black Flag, The Stanford Prison Experiment, Totimoshi, Drunks With Guns, The Unsane, Barkmarket, and the three Killdozer/Scratch Acid shows I saw damn near 20 years ago.
(www.alternativetentacles.com)