Puffy Areolas
In The Army 1981

THE REVIEW

How would a group of thirty-something fanatics raised between the myth of psychedelic music and the cult of drugs sound? Like the Puffy Areolas.

Together with bands like Druid Perfume (on less chaotic tracks), they try to bring back, if not into fashion, to some auditory entity, the sounds and sensations of times gone by. Try staying sane growing up among figures like Morrison, Iggy Pop, Jimmy Page, or Zappa. It must be said that these five wild ones from Toledo handle themselves quite well in offering an explosive cocktail of psychedelic rock, hardcore violence, and indispensable feedback, reverberations, echoes, and the like. An immense chaos made of speed and compulsive spasms, a perfect transposition of an epileptic crisis into music.

The sound is that of the anarchic violence of the Butthole Surfers blended with the abstract turbulence of Old Time Relijun to spawn an aberrant monstrosity. Here and there, you can find bluesy embroideries à la Gun Club, while more evident are splashes of psych art worthy of Captain Beefheart and Thurston Moore, as in the smoky “Puking in Piss.” However, it would be too simple for the load of violence to be limited to some pill-induced trip; there is indeed the hardcore noise gut punch of “Heart Attack,” worthy of the angriest Dead Kennedys, “Fuck Your Pretzel,” where it seems like you can hear Johnny Rotten scream, and finally the latent genius of Gang of Four behind tracks like “Deathcraze.”
If you are easily frightened by nightmares or still wet the bed, don't even dare to approach this album.