Slum City
Hot Beef Rejection (Super Secret) When straight-laced parents agonize over whether to condone their child’s involvement in rock music, it’s bands like Slum City that populate their worst nightmares. And who could blame them? Slum City comes off like a female-fronted version of Fang with all the inebriated mayhem that implies. Starting with its stomach-turning cover (one of the most revolting images to grace a local album since Daddy Longhead’s Cheetos), Hot Beef Rejection delivers a sloppy mess of limbic system-tweaking punk that reeks of ladies’ room fisticuffs and puke down the side of your car. “I don’t need no goddamn affection, I need a hot beef injection,” growls guitarist Suzy Slum in the quasi-title track. Continuing this theme, “When You Want It” is a smashing indictment of men who turn over and go to sleep too soon. “Blood on Me” (as in “woke up with your”) recalls the slam-happy ghoul rock of 45 Grave, while “No Body Loves Me (Like I Do)” is a fist-pumping wellspring of reflexive narcissism and stoic resolve that makes more sense with every shot. If your evening gets derailed by having too much to drink at home before 8pm, lose the car keys and let Hot Beef Rejection provide a worthy simulacrum of the ear-shattering chaos down Red River way on any given Friday.
This article appears in February 7 • 2003.
