MUDKISS FANZINE

It’s a pretty safe bet that the Impediments aren’t going to give a shit about this review, or any other. Glowering on the cover of their eponymous debut, at least half of this appealingly unappealing Californian quartet looks as if they may be sub-normal. One of them may be smiling, but that’s probably because he’s just crapped in somebody’s pocket. The album also arrives without a piece of paper telling you how great they are. Fuck what you think.

This is an album that works best if it’s played at a volume sufficient to annoy neighbours and passers by. If that’s not happening, crank it up. These young men have been listening to the Stooges, the MC5, the Heartbreakers and the Ramones and in doing so have mined the vein of good, dumb rock’n’roll that will always serve to demonstrate why the guy shooting up in his tear ducts will make a better album than the earnest young chap who would like to say a thing or two about fair trade.

In addition to being young, loud and snotty, the Impediments are also suitably priapic. It’s show and tell time; they’ll demonstrate their teenage tumescence by sticking it in your ear, and underline the point in songs such as disc opener ‘LeAnn’, a handclap infused MC5/Dolls mash up that lays out their ambition to fuck country siren, LeAnn Rimes. To be fair, this lot’ll probably settle for Lois Griffin.

This is an urgent album that crashes in, pisses on your bed and leaves, all in around half an hour. ‘Stoned To Bed’ epitomises the album; a two minute slab of frantic Stooged-out mayhem, demented soloing and twelve-bar bass. Elsewhere, in songs such as ‘Vom’, ‘(Don’t) Mess Me Around’, and ‘Violence’ the band’s position in a lineage that includes the Damned and the Dead Boys is exposed amid crunching guitars, ‘New Rose’ style drum intros and all manner of spastic teenage angst.

‘2012’ and ‘You Want A Square’, show that the band have a tender side. They have hearts that break and even the odd track where the tempo slows. Then the door marked ‘nihilism’ is kicked off its hinges, a comet hits the earth and the doomed prophecy of ‘no future’ is fulfilled. There’s hedonism too, the joys of back alley junkie business and sniffing glue are given due credit, as tracks such as ‘Pig Out’, ‘Junk’ and standout number ‘Down’ find the quartet gouching out at the palace of excess. The disc ends with the gloriously stoopid ‘Vagina Envy’, a cautionary tale that further underlines the Ramonic influence evident in earlier tracks. Here are the young men your parents warned you about. I’m sure Nick, Ray, Rene and Mike’s moms and pops despair of them. Which is exactly how it should be.  

Reviewed by Dick Porter