Band : Thank God
Album : Ice/Age
Release Year : 2010
Genre : Chaotic / Hardcore / Noise / Experimental
Tracklist :
1) Ice/Age
2) Chicken Dance
3) Cash Mere
4) Wow
5) One Half
6) Set / Go
7) Shit
8) Buy/Sell
9) Sax on the Beach
10) Untitled
11) Hugo Chavez
Thank God is an experimental punk band from South Carolina, and their new full-length record, “Ice/Age”, sounds like it’s trying really hard to be “Burn Piano Island Burn” era Blood Brothers with a lot of repetitive spacey parts and the chaos and seemingly pattern-less guitar work cranked to an annoyingly high level. The vocals are shrill and shrieky, the music is all over the place, and I’m getting a headache just writing about it. Their last.fm page raves “THANK GOD aims to deconstruct the standards and create something left-of-center with their own frantic and chaotic style of hardcore,” so it’s pretty apparent that they’re writing this music for the sake of writing songs that are off-the-wall. That’s all well and good, and it’s been done by many a greater band with positive, listenable results, but in Thank God’s case, it just results in a noisy mess.
The record kicks in with the title track “Ice/Age”, which starts with a strange finger tapping guitar part that maniacally jumps back and forth between that and them slamming on a few jangly chords between some ear-splitting shrieks. What follows can only be explained as aural vomit, with the annoying shrieks now being split into separate and complimentary tracks with some sort of effect on them, while one guitarist plays a slow, ambient lead and the other punches his guitar in confusion. The next track, “Chicken Dance” somehow jacks the annoyance up to a greater level, as it starts with the vocalist shouting gibberish and one of the guitarists straight up hitting random notes on his highest frets. This continues for another 2 minutes, just with dissonant chords laid over top of it. “Cash Mere” is just the same two chords slammed and played tremolo for the entirety of the song, and by this point this album has become unlistenable. The songs actually slow down as it reaches its end, but they don’t become any better or less irritating. Also, if you want to hear someone playing the saxophone very badly for a minute and a half, listen to the track “Sax on the Beach” (although I do appreciate the Simpsons reference).
If you like unnecessarily noisy, random music, or simply want to push the boundaries of your ear drums’ tolerance for some sick thrill, pick this up.
2) Chicken Dance
3) Cash Mere
4) Wow
5) One Half
6) Set / Go
7) Shit
8) Buy/Sell
9) Sax on the Beach
10) Untitled
11) Hugo Chavez
Thank God is an experimental punk band from South Carolina, and their new full-length record, “Ice/Age”, sounds like it’s trying really hard to be “Burn Piano Island Burn” era Blood Brothers with a lot of repetitive spacey parts and the chaos and seemingly pattern-less guitar work cranked to an annoyingly high level. The vocals are shrill and shrieky, the music is all over the place, and I’m getting a headache just writing about it. Their last.fm page raves “THANK GOD aims to deconstruct the standards and create something left-of-center with their own frantic and chaotic style of hardcore,” so it’s pretty apparent that they’re writing this music for the sake of writing songs that are off-the-wall. That’s all well and good, and it’s been done by many a greater band with positive, listenable results, but in Thank God’s case, it just results in a noisy mess.
The record kicks in with the title track “Ice/Age”, which starts with a strange finger tapping guitar part that maniacally jumps back and forth between that and them slamming on a few jangly chords between some ear-splitting shrieks. What follows can only be explained as aural vomit, with the annoying shrieks now being split into separate and complimentary tracks with some sort of effect on them, while one guitarist plays a slow, ambient lead and the other punches his guitar in confusion. The next track, “Chicken Dance” somehow jacks the annoyance up to a greater level, as it starts with the vocalist shouting gibberish and one of the guitarists straight up hitting random notes on his highest frets. This continues for another 2 minutes, just with dissonant chords laid over top of it. “Cash Mere” is just the same two chords slammed and played tremolo for the entirety of the song, and by this point this album has become unlistenable. The songs actually slow down as it reaches its end, but they don’t become any better or less irritating. Also, if you want to hear someone playing the saxophone very badly for a minute and a half, listen to the track “Sax on the Beach” (although I do appreciate the Simpsons reference).
If you like unnecessarily noisy, random music, or simply want to push the boundaries of your ear drums’ tolerance for some sick thrill, pick this up.
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