Toiling Midgets
Sea Of Unrest

The Toiling Midgets are proof that there is no correlation between a band's popularity and their quality. However, there is a correlation with the fame a group acquires, fame that can be spread even amongst just a few lucky ones.

The Toiling Midgets are living legends, do names like Sleepers and Negative Trend ring a bell? Those who are into sonic criminality surely know what I'm talking about: Ricky Williams, former singer of the Sleepers, Tim Mooney, the original Sleepers' first drummer, and Craig Gray, founder, along with Mooney, of the legendary Negative Trend were sonic delinquents (let's not forget that Flipper also originated from Negative Trend!) and between '77 and '80 they recorded albums that shook the walls, true and pure hardcore.

These (our heroes) give birth around 1980 to the Toiling Midgets (which could mean "the little men who toil," who knows!?), and if you think that the coordinates of their music are always the same, you're greatly mistaken. The Midgets move beyond, leaving the past behind, or rather surpassing it, becoming the other face of the wild and nihilistic frenzy of hardcore, maintaining the same pathos but expressing it in a much more sophisticated way, thus bringing rage to a level that is no longer external but internal.

In 1982 the Toiling Midgets release their first LP, "Sea of Unrest," and they had developed what in some ways was already post-hardcore. Even the unsettling cover is very significant; their music is indeed in perpetual black and white, the guitar phrases are scales of gray alternating, the general mood hovers over paranoia, and the predominance of black over white creates a sickly atmosphere. At first glance, this music might seem as far as you can get from hardcore, but you quickly realize how the attitude is the same.

Tim Mooney on drums shows great creativity with no problem in changing tempo continuously, and he dialogues with the guitars, always precise and apt. Ricky Williams' singing not too vaguely recalls David Bowie, but it constantly swings between drunken and a nervous breakdown. It continually changes vocal intonations in a rollercoaster of highs and lows, hardly ever following the rest of the group; sometimes it seems the opposite. Guitar and bass are always in the foreground and are the group's real gem: scales, phrases, ascents-descents, screeching, they manage to scratch the soul and be melancholic, never trivial, always present with a sugary pinch of glam that makes them more unsettling.

All the songs on the album are of excellent level and form a cohesive narrative. Splendid is the opener "Destiny" which immediately strikes, leaving one speechless, it summarizes all the characteristics of the group, compelling and emotionless. It's impossible to remain indifferent even to "Microage" that continues to grow and implode on itself continually, with guitars that seem to climb pyramids always finding themselves at the starting point. Also very beautiful is the instrumental "All the Girls Cry," a slow-motion heavy-metal that slyly shifts from boredom to anger. Every song is interesting, all should be mentioned, and one can find the seeds of much '90s music. Ultimately this record seems like a journey through suffering, with no resolution other than the cathartic truce of art.

After this debut LP, the Midgets continued without false steps but always, unfortunately, in anonymity, joining in the '90s with their friend, the great Mark Eitzel of the legendary American Music Club, producing excellent works like "SON'" which is worth listening to.

However, "Sea of Unrest" remains perhaps their best work and is highly recommended to everyone, especially those who want to understand who laid the first building blocks of post-hardcore and post-rock, well before bands like Fugazi and Jesus Lizard, and for those who want to enjoy good music, the kind that stirs something inside, traveling in the sea of unrest.