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Rob Crow is a man of visions. Not the hallucinatory kind, mind you, but to fence his incredible talent into a singular vision is just plain inaccurate. By fusing the jazz-prog of the Residents, the dynamic time signature and tempo shifts of Slint, the pop acrobatics of Sparks and the stellar vocal harmonies of the Beach Boys, he single-handedly invented the music you could call post-pop over two albums in the mid-1990's (and a posthumous comp) with his band Heavy Vegetable, a feat almost no one saw fit to write about at the time and even fewer critics have discovered in retrospect.
He furthered this sound's progression with two more albums and an EP with his band Thingy, turned novelty-pop on its head with two albums by Optiganally Yours, barreled through hardcore with the Alpha Males and Fantasy Mission Force, genre-hopped from boy-band pop to death metal and back with three solo albums, put his stamp on modern arena rock with Team Sleep, and still has a few more projects up his sleeve (including a posthumous third Thingy album, a new Optiganally Yours album O.Y. in Hi-Fi, a collaboration with Zach Hill of Hella called the Ladies and other projects which have yet to be announced). Most publicly, he and his collaborators have earned a legion of followers with the innovative rhythms and alluring melodies of Pinback.
Some have surmised that Crow has the equivalent of musical A.D.D., but it's more a case of seeing the world through song and brimming to the gills with inspiration and originality. He is clearly one of the most distinct and innovative musicians of the last 20 years. Of course, nothing exists in a vacuum and at the heart of this long and twisting musical career is a metalhead. And in that metalhead's heart of motherfucking hearts is a band found at the heart of rock itself, Black Sabbath. That secret black heart has been simmering in a vast cauldron filled with orc's blood, seasoned with a comic books obsession and injected with a vulgar sense of humor juxtaposed over a love of simple things (such as Sesame Street's elusive pachyderm, Snuffaluffagus). From the caustic, bubbling froth emerges Goblin Cock, monstrous in its potency, grotesque, fully formed, vile and virile in its power. OK, I could write this bio with enough cock puns to choke a critic (see?) and enough hyperbole to make it any metal release, but it's not. It's better. Goblin Cock's debut Bagged and Boarded is the best rock record in years. This is not a side project. This is not ironic. Yes, this is serious. Yes, this is fun. Yes, this record is so fucking great for so many reasons, chief among them the way it rocks. Both Rob Crow and guitarist Brent Asbury (ex-Thingy, ex-Pinback) are expecting newborns in October, so Goblin Cock won't be touring until after the new year. Wait and/or be destroyed. Fuckface. Available on CD and glorious, glorious picture disc vinyl LP. |
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