Ausmuteants
Band of the Future

But in sleepy Geelong, what else can a boy do if not start a rock 'n' roll band?

Geelong, still Australia, and it means that the times when bird-men flew are really back.

Frowning Clouds, Living Eyes, Wet Blankets, Hierophants, ORB are just some of the names that make up that scene.

The Ausmuteants might be the new sensation, they have everything it takes to be one.

It always starts from there, from afternoons spent to the rhythm of "Back From The Grave" and "Killed By Death", sixties garage and dark proto-punk'n'roll from the seventies, none of that Electric Prunes or Sex Pistols stuff.

That way, it's less boring.

Jake Robertson - Ausmuteants, Frowning Clouds, and also Hierophants - says he's just a bored guy who doesn't have a PlayStation; he also says that now that he’s made some money, he bought a PlayStation and writes a lot fewer songs, then bursts into a resounding laugh.

But what they play in Geelong is a definitely sui generis garage-punk, so contaminated by other sounds ranging from hard’n’heavy to funk to soul.

Let’s consider the Ausmuteants.

They are among the veterans of the scene, formed in 2012 or thereabouts, and they have four proper albums under their belt, plus some seven-inches.

They combine punk rock with those strange sounds known as synth-wave, two separate worlds that collide: as improbable as possible, something to predict that no matter what, it will be a disaster.

Yet it works, impossible to explain how, but it works.

It works very well in "Order of Operation" from 2014.

It works even better in their latest LP, "Band of the Future", released in August 2016.

Fourteen songs not reaching half an hour, meaning each track doesn't exceed two minutes, or in some cases goes past the fateful two-minutes-two, but it’s just ten seconds over, hardly anything.

The length is punk rock.

There are also the voices of bored & angry teenagers, the sharp guitars, the drums racing at high speeds and all the wonderful and indispensable stereotypes that contribute to making the genre great.

Everything together is punk rock.

What doesn’t add up is the synth-wave.

I went to read the definition on Wikipedia and it scared me.

I should abhor such a genre and it’s certain that if anyone ever introduced such a work into my home, they'd be flying out the window in no time, both the work in question and the unfortunate someone.

But the Ausmuteants are so good that their mix works extraordinarily well.

It's as if Bored! - old glories of the Geelong scene straddling the seventies and eighties, something in the wake of Radio Birdman and Saints - played a jam session with Devo and Stranglers, for the famous ones, or with my adored and unknown Metal Urbain.

Thus, certain "plastic" sounds make their way, more or less in the background, that not even Plastic Bertrand at the time of the immortal anthem "Ca Plane pour Moi" could achieve; only Plastic Bertrand has already said goodbye to punk, while the Ausmuteants maintain an unaltered ugly, dirty and mean vein that makes all the difference in the world.

Tracks like "I Hate You", "Liars", and "Calculations" are here just to reaffirm it in no uncertain terms.