Band: godheadSilo
Album: The Scientific Supercake
Genre: sludge/experimental
Year: 1994
Label: Kill Rock Stars
While he can err on the side of excessive “hipsterism” and I don’t always agree with all of his opinions and analysis, I still find Chuck Klosterman one of my favorite journalists because of our common interests. Klosterman’s famous “VORM” article I read in his compilation X strived to find the value of each individual musician in a band- first by calculating a musician’s worth relative to their other band members, then calculating that band’s relative worth to other bands. Ambitious? Yes. Controversial? Certainly. I had listened to most of the bands at the top of the weighted spectrum (Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Radiohead) but one name that caught my eye was godheadSilo, intriguingly weighted the same as R.E.M. Curiosity = piqued.
Watching some of the band’s mid-nineties YouTube performances, I got a sense that you had to be there. I just knew a video recording couldn’t do these guys justice- it was just a bassist (Mike Kunka) and drummer (Dan Haugh) slamming away on their instruments with relentless fury. Both the band members have experienced hearing loss and discomfort from their brutal shows, and I knew I had to pick up The Scientific Supercake right away to further my artistic experience.
After a few listens, I concur that godheadSilo were certainly less songwriters than soundcrafters. There’s almost no way to describe the SOUND of this thing- if I had to compare it to any other record I’d probably pick Godflesh’s Streetcleaner, but listening to this album at any decent volume with good speakers will make your skin crawl. I’ve always been a sucker for more sonically than technically ambitious albums, so I found this right in my wheelhouse. Fun fact- if you turn the bass all the way up on your speakers and play this, it’ll blow them out. Not that I’m willing to try.
Opener “Nuts To You” has Kunka’s strangled vocals higher in the mix than any of the other songs, with Haugh’s mutated rhythms taking center stage. They settle into a more comfortable crushing tempo on “Birthday Sandwich”, but it isn’t until the freaky white-noise blasts on “Another Schizoid Ambelism” that the record truly reaches its hair-raising peak. The heart of the record is “Mr. Push Up”, which serves as the quintessential godheadSilo song; extended, creepy intro, percolating tempos, and harsh treble spurts. “I Luv U….Nicorns” has almost a pop sensibility to it, with catchy, ripping riffs, and “Hopefully They Will Learn” serves as a bleak, disturbing intro to the final two songs, which wind down all the thrashing somewhat. Short interludes are sprinkled throughout the record, ranging from melodic (“Two Peanuts Are Walking Down The Street”) to esoteric (“Ventriloqueef”).
Kunka and Haugh haven’t explicitly expressed the desire to record again since 1998’s Share the Fantasy, so we may have seen the last of this incarnation of heavy noise rock. While the riffs can get repetitive and janky at times, and Kunka doesn’t have much to offer as a vocalist, I haven’t even heard of anything close to the general sound and diverse range of influences this album draws from, and it hasn’t been commodified and diluted by legions of poor imitators. The sound of this album draws you in initially, but the strong songwriting and attention to detail gives it multitudes of replay value. Definitely recommended.
Rating: 7.2 / 10
Top Tracks:
Another Schizoid Ambelism
Mr. Push Up
Guest review by Adam Nohl
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