Charger - Disgust At The Status Quo (Future Noise Recordings)
By Chris Barnes
January 19, 2010
Sweet Jesus, my ears were just blown to the back of my head. Eleven-odd years of slugging it out in the sludge trenches and exposing audiences to volume-induced G-forces that no human should have to endure, Stoke-On-Trent's Charger launches a broadside of crust-laden filth…
Disgust At The Status Quo generates a sound somewhere between Iron Monkey on a coffee bender and the bombing of Dresden.
We get three new songs on this one, all inspired by various cult media outlaws and mixed by Alex Jockel for maximum output. “Omar Suarez” (yep,
Scarface) opens with an audio clip that isn’t near as loud as the barrage of low-end discharge that erupts on the Ipod headphones 15 seconds later. Scared the crap out of me. “Omar…” I dig mostly because I like to picture the drummer flailing away like a mental patient for the last 20 seconds of the track. Just when you think Charger is going to slow down and end on a crawl, the tempo gets a Christmas goose and the band goes apeshit. “The Stuffer” is the money track, starting off like Charged GBH before locking onto a hell-heavy groove and some spoken rasps… “When I see you, I run for cover / you will always be a sucker YEAHHHHHHHHHH!!!”. Good God, what stones these lads have. “The Stuffer” even features some brief fretboard flash set forth among the killing fields softened by the aural airstrike that is the Charger rhythm section.
The last three tracks are a lovely surprise, three incendiary live tracks which are sure to make bones rattle even with the worst of stereo equipment. Polite too, the Charger band thanking the audience politely after every aural bunker bomb.
If you are in the mindset of pummeling your head with some blasting Brit bedlam, you could do far worse. The only problem is that you’re left wanting more. Not a bad place to be by any measure.
Visit the Charger website at www.fuzzbastards.com
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