Ghetto Ghouls

(Monofonus Press)

Ghetto Ghouls barbaric garage-scuzz crystallizes on snare-spiked opener “Peepshow,” whose vaulting rhythms, dental-drill guitar tone, and garbled shouts stuff the singer into a straitjacket. A Beerland house band, the Ghouls recreate their Lone Star-spilling live show with this self-recorded 12-song bow, released on vinyl by Austin’s great underground media publisher, Monofonus Press. While vocalist Corey Anderson’s unintelligible, megaphone slurring pushes EQ levels into the red and blares lo-fi over the sequence of typically 90-second song bursts, Dead Space anchor Garrett Hadden revs the engine room with wrench-tight basslines on the 10-word “Living Alone” and twitchy, loose-nut anthem “Atomic Bomb.” The latter stands as the 23-minute disc’s best track until grand finale “Simple C” approximates Lou Reed getting wasted with Fugazi (wink). Musically, Ghetto Ghouls shirks complexities – Dan LeVine’s one-note guitar lead on “It’s So Cold” – but it subsists on reckless energy, and they have loads of it.

**.5

This article appears in May 23 • 2014.

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