Jesus Lizard
Down

THE REVIEW

Curriculum Vitae:

Duane Denison (Guitar):

- Graduated in classical guitar at Eastern Michigan University

•- Student of the renowned classical musician Christoper Parkening

•- Member of Cargo Cult (Psychedelic-Hardcore band along with the legendary frontman of Big Boys, Randy Turner)

•- Member of Jesus Lizard

•- Member of Denison Kimball Trio (Band in which he plays Jazz)

•- Member of Firewater (Noir band with Tod Ashley (leader of Cop Shoot Cop), Dave Ouimet (Motherhead Bug), Jim Kimble (Laughing Hyenas), and Yuval Gabay (Soul Coughing)

•- Played blues in the 1999 tour with Hank Williams III, grandson of the legendary bluesman Hank Williams Sr.

•- Member of Tomahawk (Experimental supergroup influenced by Mr. Mike Patton, with other rhythmic gems (John Stanier, drummer of Helmet, and Kevin Rutmanis, bassist of Melvins)

About him, a critic as measured and sober as Piero Scaruffi, who doesn't easily tend to idolatry, states "One of the gods of modern guitar, Duane Denison delights the listener with astonishing passages in all his projects: Jesus Lizard, Firewater, and DK3"

David Sims (Bass):

•- Member of Scratch Acid (Pioneering post-hardcore band from Texas)

•- Member of Rapeman (Seminal Noise-Industrial-Core Band created by one of the distorted geniuses of modern music: Steve Albini)

•- Member of Jesus Lizard

Mac McNeilly (Drums):

•- Member of 86

•- Member of Phantom 309

A drummer who ranges from Jazz to Funk to Hardcore, passing through industrial and blues. The (well-deserved) praises for Mac McNeilly abound, an octopus god with two drumsticks, an intelligent sexual torturer jazz drummer of cymbals.

David Yow (Vocals)

•- Member of Scratch Acid (Pioneering post-hardcore band from Texas)

•- Member of Jesus Lizard

Absolutely a mental fanatic. Probably the neurotic pinnacle of all Jesus Lizard’s sound, his live performances are the essence of urban-human tragedy, of the individual's isolation that finds its only possible manifestation in dissonance, social incapacity, a noise babbling of a DDT-stuffed insect. Yow's noir deliriums, skirting the edge of schizophrenia, are the renunciation of any reaction, an agonizing description of decadence and human no-sense.

End of Curriculum.

The post-hardcore of Jesus Lizard clearly distances itself from the technical elementary of the first HC (Germs, Misfits, Black Flag, DRI), the sound does not retain an explosiveness as a cardinal factor but is devoured to scrape the belly in repeated sado-masochistic practices. The nervous breaks magnificently accentuated by Yow’s out-of-tune vocalism are the clear representation that "No Future" assumes new characteristics, rooted not in the heart, but in an immutable DNA like a stone. "Goat" - "Head" - "Liar" and "Pure" were in this sense real human tragedies, tragedies of the emotionally violated sugarpaste man, forced by his passivity to become a monothematic machine for the degradation and annihilation of will. Yow is a man with a mind dominated by the lower abdomen and by his figures of daily squalor, he sang about sado-masochism, death, industrial stench, abandonment, perpetual fading of joy. Always supported by musicians who, in the meantime, coined a post-big black language of boundless imagination.

If the first four works rank among the immortal rock masterpieces of the 20th century, this Down is paradoxically their most varied and perhaps technically complete work. David Yow loses the Scratch Acid matrix glow, showing himself weighed down and confused; thus, the fortune of such a peculiar album is mainly entrusted to the rest of the Lizard. “Down” can be considered as Denison, Sims, and Macneilly’s album. The phrasing of the rhythmic section has few equals in rock history for how inspired and pulsating it is, and the "god of modern guitar" indulges, for his part, in visionary jazz, blues, psychedelic rock, hardcore, industrial practices, using his vast repertoire of effects, counter-times, cacophonies, arpeggios, and progressions. The most disconcerting influence, for a deep connoisseur of the first part of Jesus Lizard's discography, is without a doubt that of the Californian Doors. Denison and Sims, in tracks like "The Associate" and "The Best Parts", build a psychedelic structure directly related to the marvelous LSD school of Krieger-Manzarek.

After repeated listening, the entire album appears as a vibrant and dazzling hybridization, where the spine of hardcore naturally supports the most diverse intuitions and styles of the last century. The last masterpiece of Jesus Lizard.