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Rating: This is the true fourth album by the Stooges, not the rancid soup of "Weiderness". There's nothing strange about this, except the fact that it comes from Sweden. Yes, I can't understand how they freeze to death up there, all they have to do is put on this record, and the room temperature would even melt the frozen mummy of Similaun. Consider yourself warned, there's nothing worse than an angry Swede and Ebbot Lundberg live gets really mad. After all, to keep hordes of drunk punks who crowd the stage in Gothenburg and its surroundings at bay, it takes a lot of aggression, and these five guys defend themselves by blasting sound barrages coated with Ebbot's vitriolic voice.
Even in his small Scandinavian world, he's a stage animal, his jumps disconnect the microphone jack, and he’s forced to groan face down using the drum's jack. He saw his American hardcore heroes do it as a kid, but his guitarist friend Patrick Caganis had been to Minneapolis for a high school study vacation and returned to Gothenburg converted to the gospel of the sacred triad Amboy Dukes/MC5/Stooges.
Having survived three perilous years on stages across Sweden, by September 1987 the first album is done and they call it "In the air tonight" ... but the sound is not exactly like that of Phil Collins' track, fans of the world's richest drummer would do well to steer clear, here ears that are too delicate could suffer irreparable damage to the Eustachian tube.
My blood brothers devoted to the cult of the iguana Osterberg scattered across the site know they can trust me: it's a fantastic record right from the first track, "Ring My Bell", the bass does two scales, the guitar croaks and gives the signal to the drums which start pumping like a metronome, the distortion wah wah explosion duly renews the miracle in your veins like the blood of San Gennaro melting for centuries... this is ROCK, guys!
The Stooges live again in "Financial Diseas" where the guitars bite, the rhythm bites, Ebbot's voice bites screaming... I waaaaant moooooore! and you're missing some pieces, but don't worry, it's for a good cause. In "Cartoon Animal" these crazies make a piano strum and a sax howl reminiscent of Steve Mackay's free wail in the fuzz chaos of the guitars as if they were Captain Beefheart's platoon. The opening riff of "So long" has to pay royalties to Ron "Rock Action" Asheton, but the track is magnificently seismic and honestly doesn't make Ann Arbor seem five thousand miles away at all. Even the indescribable chaos in which "Teenage Bankman" dies, amidst insane sax, trumpet blasts, distorted guitars, shattered piano chords, Ebbot's laughter, makes you think of the sound assault brought by the Fugs terrorists centuries ago and makes you realize that it's true that UCP is the right band at the wrong time. And at the end of the album, with "Down the Beach", they place eleven minutes of slow and wonderful hypnotic noise just like Husker Du did with "Reoccurring Dreams" in "Zen Arcade".
Take my word for it, don't be fooled by that clown Pelle and that big belly Vigilante Carlstroem photographed together with Iggy Pop, the "real Stooges" made in Sweden are the Union Carbide Productions.
Tracklist and Videos
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