On the face of it the new record from '68 is another glistening dollop of sledgehammer sleaze but look beneath the hood and it's clear that frontman Josh Scogin has hit the chop shop, turning an already full-blooded power duo into a true tyre-shredding hot rod.
The riffs hit harder, the dynamics are sharper, and the songs cut deeper than before, but the true injection of a good few hundred extra horsepower comes from the addition of new drummer Nikko Yamada – possibly not since Grohl joined Nirvana has a new stickman lit such a fire.
Playing with almost telepathic understanding throughout, in Give One Take One Scogin and Yamada have choreographed a sometimes brutal, always beautiful cage fight between meaty heavy-blues guitar and volcanic drums – it's there right from the off in the changing tempos of opener and first single 'The Knife, The Knife, The Knife' and reaches its peak with the mesmerising time signature fuckery in the final third of the epic 'What You Feed'.
Yamada's tectonic-plate druming is ever-present, giving the album a power that can't be faked and which captures the duo's hectic live shows perfectly, but that's not to understate the sheer talent of Scogin (previously of Norma Jean and The Chariot), who has put together some of the best songs of his career.
'The Silence, The Silence, The Silence' has all the swagger of their previous album, breathtakingly so, but things are almost mellow on 'Life and Debt' which is an unexpected change of pace – beautiful in a took-a-bleeding-nose-and-two-black-eyes-for-you kind of way. Explosive drums dip and dive in the chaotic 'Lovers in Death' which is as much tense feedback and dead string hammering as it is frenzied riffage, and the drawling 'Nervous Passenger' carries more than a hint of QOTSA's spun-out desert rock.
Somehow ragged and devastatingly efficient at the same time
Give One Take One is more creative and less deliberately quirky than '68's
previous efforts, more expansive and more muscular. This is serious business,
like nothing else you've heard this year.
Words - Joe Ponting
Listen : 'Bad Bite'