With productivity levels not seen since the purple one said goodbye to Paisley Park, as well as more frequent moniker tinkering than Mr Mellencamp, ‘Metamorphosed’ is Osees millionth release in the last fifteen minutes.
Released by Rock Is Hell records who since signing the band, have been on 24-hour shift patterns in a bid to cope with the tsunami of output from John Dwyer and his increasingly settled bandmates, hellbent on ensuring nothing goes to waste; ‘Metamorphosed’, consisting of recycled material from sessions leading to the release of their recent double album ‘Face Stabber’.
Don’t let that put you off though, there’s never a dull moment on ‘Metamorphosed’, the record’s title proving eerily prescient. The first three tracks ‘Saignant’, ‘Electric War’ and ‘Weird and Wasted Connection’, give the impression of the band members working off a collective insult. short sharp bursts of garage rock noir, grunge, punk-funk and heavy rock, burning up the band’s surplus nervous energy, leaving you wondering if they’ve drunk a vat of coca-cola spiked with speed on their way to the studio.
Now suitably warmed up, the zeitgeist capturing number ‘The Virologist’ slingshots us into a widdly pupae stage; a hypnotic Zappa-tinged instrumental, propelled by a driving yet not too urgent 60s psych groove. With fuzzy freeform blues weaving in and out vying for attention it seems the band are stuck in the eternal search for that life-changing killer riff.
Rounding things off, or Side Two for those taking the vinyl plunge, the paranoid opiate-fuelled descent into madness ‘I Got A Lot’ clocks at a whopping 23 minutes. Normally tracks like this take the space rock route but instead Dwyer first introduces the listener to a frenetic yet mesmerizing jungle setting. Unsettling vocals alternate ‘You’ve got a lot on your mind’, with ‘You’re going out of your mind’ over and over again until as if by magic, Colonel Kurtz’s men appear dressed in white coats, carrying a catering sized hypodermic, an emergency service siren wailing in the background whilst you wonder where the last 20 odd minutes went. If you’ve got the lockdown blues, probably best to skip this closer as it’s more batshit than the content of Adam West’s portaloo.
Words - Mike Price
Osees official