The Mutants - Your Desert My Mind

Written by GE 138.

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Picture stolen from the Internet

First off, thanks to my heterosexual life mate Monica for getting this CD into my grubby little hands. "Review it", she said. "I wanna know what you think about it." Now usually when someone tells me that, what they really mean to say is I wanna hear you talk shit about this band, but with Monica, I actually believe she wants to know what I think about the music, as opposed to just tossing chum into the water to attract me to attack and shred on some random band that deserves it. Not that The Mutants are random, of course. They're an interesting musical experiment in underground scenes that have been kicking up some dust for a while now. I know of the band through Mr. Rat Scabies involvement, and wanted to check the band out live but recently missed them playing here in Las Vegas @Triple B's, because I was out of town playing my own gig in LA, but Monica went to the show, snagged me a CD, and here we are. I was curious as to what it sounded like, so I popped it in first chance I got, fingers crossed that it was going to be good.

The first thing that struck me about this CD is that the opening track, the title track to this album, sucks. Like big time. Terrible choice for an opening track. Made me wanna just huck this CD out my window into traffic. Sounded like The Dandy Warhols covering Kula Shaker after one too many beers drunk during a battle of musical pomposity. Ugh. Once you get past that opening boring behemoth, there's some interesting snippets of things going on here. It's pretty/ugly, it's artsy, with heavily layered/treated vocals stretched out over some droning, atmospheric, slow riffs that probably sound pretty amazeballs if you were tripping on peyote at Joshua Tree and listening to this. Seems like the music is more about setting a tone or creating an atmosphere rather than rocking out. Sonically, it's sounds great, well produced, fantastic mix, but these musically majestic pieces of sludgy gooeyness were more 'miss' than 'hit' with me. Reminded me of a long lost Queens Of The Stone Age / Fu Manchu album full of mistakes and outtakes. Shorter songs like Highway 62, The Final Hand, Machismo Postura, and Night Bus To Krakow (The Return), built around a snazzy Rat Scabies drum line, were the ones that worked for me, and the rest, meh. Not saying it's bad, just saying it's not for me. Is that a bad thing to say nowadays?

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Released by the Killer Tracks label, which you can go to by clicking here. Available from the band at every gig they play, and from The Mutants website (click here). Also available digitally via iTunes (click here), Amazon (click here), and various other places where Punk is marketed and sold as the cheap commodity that it is. "Like" The Mutants on Facebook by clicking here. 

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