Threatmantics
Album: Kid McCoy
Label: Folkwit
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.threatmantics.com/

Back in 2008 this "alternative rock 'n' roll" band from Cardiff produced a quirky yet insidiously appealing EP, Upbeat Love, which (EPs being so difficult to file easily) has since resisted my attempts to re-locate - every bit as much as it had originally resisted attempts to musically pigeonhole or classify the music within. Now, with the band now having expanded to a permanent four-piece lineup comes an expansion of their musical ambition with the release (at last) of a full-length album on which - as the press release candidly puts it - they "attempt to crowbar as much into rock'n'roll as possible".

Threatmantics have the unusual selling-point of featuring a heavily amplified viola in place of a lead guitar; is this an intentional continuation of the John Cale (VU) legacy I wonder? No matter, for the viola makes a stunning, dolefully soaring - and distinctive - sound; it's played by founder member Heddwyn Davies, while Andrew Lewis continues in the electric guitar role, with Huw Alun Davies on drums (mostly) and newest member Gareth Middleton on bass; Taliesyn Källström is also listed on the sleeve as vocalist.

Once again, the music Threatmantics produce obstinately resists any halfway-significant classification, although at times it may take heavy inspiration from Dick Dale-style surf rock, garage punk, fuzz-beat psych, spaghetti-western, Deep Purple and 80s alt-indie, yet without ever settling consistently for any length of time - and thus avoiding the chance of becoming in any way predictable. Which is cool…Threatmantics also have a keenly playful, if surreal, sense of humour: the coy toyshop pulse of Lonely Heart and the slightly gawky piano-led Birthday Girl both strangely complement the pop-love-romance lyric of Apple Tree, which smacks of classic XTC but is possessed with an altogether harsher sound and a cutting rhythm edge. But as a candidate for a least-covered song topic it's hard to beat dinosaur-bird Archaeopteryx; this brilliant fun number could easily be a vintage Rezillos cut!

There's also some definitive Welsh-metal (now that's a new one for you!) on the theremin-haunted Esgyrn and the pounding, brooding (and, I think, bilingually rendered) tale of Shotgun Billy (Cardiff's Undertones?), while White Otello becomes increasingly dissatisfied with its own fate (and dissonant with it), finally clamouring for "quiet in the auditorium!". Which we kind-of get with the unashamedly stately, positively glowing reassurance of Don't Carry (Heddwyn herself taking the vocal lead here). As for the bookending pair of tracks Wazoo and Dumpamundo, these may surely frighten the horses with their wilfully distorted vocals, juddering, blinding, grinding ambiences and determinedly opaque lyrics (well I can't make out what they're singing about anyway), but the steaming, deafening power they unleash is terrific and definitely in the "ignore at your peril" bracket.

Any fleeting impressions of mild unsureness of purpose the listener might gain on first hearing this CD are quickly dispelled by the band's sheer presence, driving energy and shattering conviction. OK, it would've been nice to have included lyrics and/or translations; and I'm not at all sure of the significance (if any) of the Kid McCoy icon, other than (maybe?) in considering the disc a knockout?! But Threatmantics have certainly persuaded me to sneak a retrospective entry into my 2012 Ten Best Albums!

David Kidman