Holy crap! 'The World is Ending and It's About Time' positively explodes from the speakers in a frenzied rush. And from thereon in, Retox assault the listener's senses with 300-decibel, 1,000 mile-per-hour tornadoes of noise.
This four-piece certainly know all about creating a short sharp shock – to the extent that they redefine it, shorter, sharper and more shocking than the rest. But they don't deal in the kind of sludgy, 15-second noise explosions bands like Extreme Noise Terror specialise in: Retox somehow manage to compress angular speed punk numbers that bounce off the walls in all different directions at once, into a minute or so. There are lyrics in there – screamed, and spat out at a rate of twenty to the dozen – but there are definitely lyrics in there, and they're angry as hell.
They're all about the paradoxical or quippy titles, too: 'A Bastard on Father's Day'; 'A Funeral on Christmas'; '30 Cents Shot of a Quarter'; 'Ten Pounds of Shit in a Five-Pound Bag' are all representative.
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If an album containing 11 tracks with a total running time of 13 minutes and eleven seconds sounds more like an EP, believe me, 'Ugly Animals' is definitely an album, simply condensed into one speedball of blinding intensity. As the final cymbal crash of the closer 'Piss Elegant' (the album's longest track, clocking in at 2:21) is abruptly muted, I'm left dazed but exhilarated, rather like I've had my brain scoured with an industrial drill. Just the way I like it.
Retox Online
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