The Computers – This Is The Computers (album, One Little Indian).
Some bands have names that match how they sound. For example, it’s wholly appropriate that seemingly endless variations of cliché laden, tepid interpretations of second-hand rock’n’roll tropes should emanate from a group with a Christmas cracker pun name like U2. Conversely, think of Motörhead and you can feel the sulphate trammelling along Lemmy’s septum. However, The Computers simply don’t sound like their nomenclature. This is visceral rock’n’roll, motherfucker – not the antiseptic whirring of motherboards.
It’s not that ‘The Computers’ is a bad name; it’s just a little off-kilter. Ideally, they’d be called something more metaphorically concrete, like ‘Grindfrenzy’, or ‘The Impalers’. It’s possible, of course, that there’s an irony that has gone whizzing over my head here, but there’s nothing ambiguous about the Exeter quartet’s blistering debut album This Is The Computers (notice how I didn’t get bogged down in the whole singular/plural title issue, the same way I went all OCD over their name. We’re having a good time, right?)
Broadly speaking, the 11 tracks fall into one of two categories – there’s a kind of melodic hardcore, which sees turbo-charged Ramonics topped by Nic’s larynx shredding vocals and infused with more hooks than a room full of lunatic clerics, and then there’s some of the nastiest, most sinuous interpretations of the whole Bo Diddley/Chuck Berry canon of Ur-r’n’r tropes that I have ever heard. The former are good, whereas the latter are too good.
The disc clocks in at just under 25 minutes. Which is a good thing: Rock’n’roll should be in a hurry. No time to be 21, baby. ‘Where Do I Fit In’ hammers the pedal down hard from the get-go – hitting you like a Drano hotshot and sounding every bit as disenfranchised as it oughta. ‘Lovers Lovers Lovers’ sounds a bit like Rocket From The Crypt on crystal meth – which is no great surprise given that RFTC’s John Reis handled the production. However, the Computers have their own groove, one that is by degrees economic, choppy and pounding, teetering nicely on the edge of chaos, complete self-immolation held at bay by twin towers of melody and lyrical wit. While ‘Blood Is Thicker’ fits this template totally, ‘Hot Damocles’ opens with a shitfit before lock stepping into a kind of Birthday Party-Gone-No-Wave gumbo, and ‘Cinco de Mayo’ takes us outside, hands us some automatic ordinance and sends us on a driving hardcore death trip.
This Is The Computers becomes truly special as ‘Rhythm Revue’ thunders in. This is high-octane rock’n’roll that feeds Little Richard into an atom smasher, snaffles down the resultant sweet goo, and then shags poor ol’ Miss Molly senseless. For those of us who need to keep an eye on their cholesterol, single cut ‘Group Identity’ drops the pace back down below terminal velocity for a spot of hook-infused, coruscating, turbopunk. This respite is but temporary, ‘I’ve Got What It Takes’ sees steamhammer rhythms diced into digestible nuggets of toothsome punk’n’roll, and just as the lyrics promise, the track is enough ‘to make a good girl lose her mind’.
After the circle-pit inducing moshery of ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah But’ is gracefully adorned by layers of hammer-on twinkle, the nasty, churning blues of ‘The Queen In 3D’ refracts a vérité through a shit smeared lens. It’s just the way they walk. The mighty ‘Music Is Dead’ brings the album home by blanching the corpse of popular culture with a ballroom blitzing napalm drop. The apocalypse sounds great.
The Computers: www.myspace.com/thisisthecomputers
