polaroids of androids

A full five minutes of Speak Ill Of The Dead Together, the first track on If Ya Not Careful With Electricity It Will Kill Ya (which for abbreviation purposes will not be repeated for the remainder of this review) is spent repeating a simple dirty sludgy base and drum routine before the first lyrics even ring out. The next song, The Sky Belongs To Us includes lyrics such as "I'm not sure what next to say, I'm going to leave this bit blank too". A few songs later during Napalm Death T-Shirts, a skit depicting a fictional television show called "On Your Soapbox" has contestants venting their frustrations about seeing ghosts at work and being sacked for it.

Hopefully your picking up the gist of the review by now. This album is weird. The Hard-ons' side project, on their 4th album on as many record labels, is certainly what you would call left of centre. So much so in fact, that they have gone all the way around the world to the point that they are now actually slightly right of the centre. A mean feat by anyone's standards.

In between the highlights mentioned above, the band tears through the proverbial gauntlet of musical genre's, influences, moods and tempo's with the greatest of ease, knocking over Vulcan, Tower and all those other beefy steroided Gladiators that were so popular way back around the time that the band started.

When all is said and done, the simple pleasures of hearing an Asia via Western Sydney accent telling spooky stories, growling and crooning over some of the tightest yet dirtiest riffs created is too difficult to resist. It's hard not to chuckle your way through this album, but its definitely a laughing-with-them scenario. And that's the good type.