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Rating: On "3E" I was still quite calm. A bit uneasy, like when you're crammed in a car on a back seat, but all in all serene.
"11,000 Volts". The car is racing and the door next to me has opened.
After "Helen Forsdale" not only has the door opened, but I've fallen out and hit my head hard.
This is the music of Mars: pure psychosis.
I don't intend to go on too long, also because I believe only a few credentials are needed. They were born in the New York slums of '75; about thirty live shows, at least half of which in the sacred temple of CBGB; four classic disturbed geniuses, two men and two women, the latter, it seems, with no prior musical education. They are one of the four groups to appear on the No Wave Bible, "No New York", as well as a major influence on early Sonic Youth (although it's probably quicker to mention the No Wave groups that didn't influence them).
Mars lasted three years, just enough to become legends of their genre, molded by the genius of singer and guitarist Sumner Crane, who tragically passed away like drummer Nancy Arlen. Once the group disbanded, all except her joined the project John Gavanti with Arto Lindsay of DNA, masterfully parodying the operetta.
This record is a gradual, terrifying descent into the most hidden and dark abysses of the human psyche.
"3E" won't even seem that bad to you: introduced by a bass line from the great Mark Cunningham on which you can almost sing "you really got me," it presents itself as a vaguely catchy post-punk style song. Sure, the guitar is an atonal deluge, the drumming is so strange and icy it almost doesn't seem human, a certain anxiety about life lingers, but we'll overlook that, come on. From here on, however, it's a disastrous one-way journey: the razor-like riffs of "11,000 Volts", the maniacal attack of "Helen Forsdale", the condensed horror of "Hairwaves", where Lucy "China Burg" Hamilton's voice floats muttering over an infernal sonic sea: enough, I'm clicking stop now, I'm feeling unwell. But by now I'm hypnotized, and the claustrophobic panic of "Tunnel" and the tribal screams of "Puerto Rican Ghost" lead me to "N.N. End". Listen to believe: from this point on, it's cruel and total surrealist cacophony.
A record from which you will emerge different than before. Anxiety, visions, trembling, paranoia: the psychotic ferocity and madness of No Wave to the nth degree. Grindcore, Death Metal, sure... but we're still here asking what is the truly extreme music?
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