Shit And Shine
Cherry

Yes, you saw that right. 5, the highest rating. Until now, my 5s have been few; I always thought—what if I had to review a random "For Alto," a "Mass Projection," an "Imaginary Landscape"? In that case, what score should I give? 15, 16? This time I won't have these problems, and I have a specific reason for it; so that all of you can bang your heads against these crazy freaks and you can no longer ignore them so easily. So my rating is "political."

There are bands that start underground but don't stay there for long; they are the bands that generate a "cult" around them and fiercely nurture it. I could mention the Doors, Led Zeppelin, and hundreds of others, but the most striking and recent example is undoubtedly Tool. With a secretly accessible sound (yes, you heard it right, Tool is not as challenging as they seem, even my mom likes them), an image for immediate cult, esoteric-symbolist music videos, numerical correspondences in CDs and various quirky stuff, Maynard Keenan's band has now secured a solid base of fan-atics who smugly see them as a kind of new monotheistic religion with which to indoctrinate the infidels, who, needless to say, know nothing about music. I say this with regret because I like Tool, and very much. What does this have to do, you ask, with Shit and Shine? I'll get to that. Do you know which band is now the new "if you don't like them, you don't understand anything" band? It's Sunn O))). And only a god knows how much that annoys me. Now used as a passpartout by the so-called "intellectual metalheads" (oxymoron?) to indicate their "open-mindedness" and their "keeping up with the times," they have become the common denominator of a new lineage of haughty know-it-alls of the extreme, who now find themselves discovering the warm water found a bit earlier by nobodies like La Monte Young and Steve Reich. But let's pause for a moment. Let's stop, rather, I'm telling myself, stop with these hassles. Let's ask ourselves the question: but why does one band become a cult and another doesn't? Why Tool and not Jesus Lizard, for example? The answer is simple. Because Jesus Lizard doesn't take themselves seriously, Tool does. Except for some features that make Tool a pseudo "band for the few," that's the reason. How can you take seriously someone who says "my favorite band is Jesus Lizard" when you know that at their third song, their lead singer is lying on the ground with his thing in hand? The "intellectual metalheads" need to take themselves seriously, to think of themselves as those who "are ahead," and those who take themselves seriously need a serious cult. And unfortunately, Sunn O))) is very serious. Sunn O))) and Shit and Shine have quite a bit in common. Sunn O))) is taking large steps out of the underground, Shit and Shine stays there. "Well, but that must be because Sunn O))) is better, right?" No. I could even say the opposite. Sunn O))) can be boring, Shit and Shine surprises, in some cases quite a bit. But let's not beat around the bush anymore.

Shit and Shine is an Anglo-Texan duo dedicated to pure noise, without genre boundaries. After the still immature "You're Lucky to Have Friends Like Us," they arrived at a first attempt at exhausting noise-punk-whatever with the monolithic "Ladybird" (a single song with a single riff and a single drum tempo for 42 minutes) and through the masterpiece "Jealous of Shit and Shine," they now arrive at their third full-length album. And they do not fail. However, they decide to change the formula: this time they focus on synthesis, for an album that encompasses all the influences and vicissitudes of their sound; hence the performative-percussive delirium of "Am I a Nice Guy?", for voice and drums alone (yes, I used the plural), the '80s metal riff of "Honestly Don't" with its one and a half minute duration, the subsequent solo piece "Danielle", which doubles the length of the previous, the pseudo disco-funky of "Charm and Counter Charm", the power noise of "If You Know Susie", and so on until the closing of "The Rabbit Song", which, like in a Hegelian phenomenology, represents their true spirit: 20 minutes of a riff so distorted that it is unrecognizable. I don't want to get lost in a sterile track-by-track, but here every song is different from the previous, often also radically, sharing a level of madness far beyond the permitted limits.

Coming to the final impressions: the album is splendidly conceived, it's impossible to accuse the band of immobility, each song is unique to itself and, above all, each has the gift of synthesis, none lasts longer than necessary, indeed some even last less (there are 14 tracks in total), and even when the length reaches 20 minutes, it's all justified and calculated, there's no gratuitousness. The rating, as specified at the beginning, is a "boosted" rating, to an album like this under normal conditions, I would have given a 4, but since I don't see any scraps between Shit and Shine and Sunn O))), and since too many would be ready to say the second is the best, I, always the contrarian, rate the former better.

Ready to be stoned.