What Do I Know? I'm Just Another Guy With A Computer...
Clark Paull | Murder City | 04/20/2004
(2 out of 5 stars)
"Indiana native Dennis Most has been slogging it out in the trenches since 1969 and describes his music as a "hybrid of punky-garagy-psychedelic speed metal with hooks you can remember." As hard as that sound may be to imagine, one listen to "Wire My Jaw" leaves no doubt that it was a difficult birth. The album is comprised of both live and studio material from 1976-1990 and includes tracks from not only The Instigators (whose main claim to fame appears to have been supporting XTC back in 1980 - Damn! When that same tour rolled into Detroit's Madison Theater, all we got was Hazel O'Connor!) but another Most band called AudioLove. The only constant in the burning wreckage that is "Wire My Jaw" is the clunky, awkward monotone of Most, who mewls over the world-weary, beaten-by-life amplified ruckus laid down by a bunch of dirt merchants who can't decide if they're punk or metal. "Excuse My Spunk," the 1979 single which is allegedly a highly sought-after collector's item and numbers Jello Biafra amongst its admirers, gets off to a scrappy start, powered by a chugging riff straight out of the Brian James songbook, but the minute you turn your head, in slouches a messy guitar solo right out of Mark Farner's. More deserving of all the acclaim are "Gruesome Stories," which wouldn't sound out of place on a Roky Erickson album, Most howling like he's suffering from drug-induced mental problems, and the musclebound garage-band grunt of "King Of Sleaze." "Penetrate" starts out belligerently enough, propelled by a fuzzy, frazzled guitar tone and Most spitting venom, but its momentum is inexplicably short circuited by two entirely out-of-place guitar solos that Uriah Heep's Mick Box would be proud to lay claim to. All of the pieces for a halfway decent album lay within the grooves (or whatever the digital equivalent of "grooves" are) of "Wire My Jaw" but it's almost as if those pieces were dropped in the studio and hastily spliced back together out of order. The bulk of it wallows in some sort of primordial energy that is just waiting to be harnessed, but which seems just out of the reach of Most and what was apparently an ever-changing band of street rats. For some reason I just can't seem to put my finger on, listening to it makes me feel unclean, like listening to an Ian Dury album."
Track Listings (15) - Disc #1