Video Nasties – On All Fours

Video Nasties is a pretty appropriate name for a rock band, conjuring up as it does connotations of controversy, sex, violence, and grime. It suggests graphicness, explicitness, of unsubtlety and crassness - very rock and roll, no? "Grime", though, is perhaps the operative word in Video Nasties' case, as this is the fuzziest, grimiest-sounding album I've heard in some time. This kind of production can help a band's sound out, as proved to be the case with the American grunge movement to which Video Nasties owe some debt for their own style. However, there's a thin line between that fuzz adding a healthy dose of swagger and having it turn into a suffocating obstruction to the songs - and unfortunately, the production on On All Fours is veering dangerously towards the wrong side of that line. As the old saying goes though, we must not judge an album solely by its production. In fact curiously, the fuzziness of the landscapes here belies some of the songwriting which is in evidence - "Jellybean" may be a down and dirty rocker, and its closing organ line may have a dirty great guitar stain over it, but it is an organ nonetheless. Similarly, "Conversation Dies" among others reveals a more epic, melodic side to the album, with hypnotic, pulsing piano throbbing underneath the sludge of the guitars, alongside relatively frequent changes of pace, and a little echo tastefully and tactically applied to the vocals."Rolling" slows things down considerably as the album's obligatory (this isn't hardcore after all) calmer song. However, it feels a little outside the band's remit and feels stale by comparison to the fury of "Kaiser" which follows it and particularly the opening strains of "Teenage Celebration", a seven-and-a-half-minute epic which is less a shining cathedral of sound, more a raucous, crumbling tower block of sound, vaguely remiscent of Fucked Up's more drawn-out outings. On All Fours is probably post-grunge, if such a superfluous label exists... well, it does now, at any rate. But there's some likeable raucous rock here, even if the excessive sludge on the production and the abrasive vocals are a little offputting. In the end, Video Nasties are a bit less explosive and a bit more ordinary than their name might suggest, but that's not all bad. At least On All Fours isn't going to get banned. 66% Video Nasties on MySpace