JAAW - Supercluster
The Quietus
I don’t know if you remember the music video for Björk’s 1995 song ‘Army of Me’ but it’s a fun Michel Gondry-helmed romp with tanks, teeth, diamonds, and gorillas. That noise-rock supergroup JAAW have decided to close their debut album Supercluster with a cover of said track, albeit inflicted with Deftones ooze and the sort of scuttling breakbeats that you’d usually find adorning a Squarepusher release, tells you a fair amount about their approach.
A couple of other informative pointers are that there’s a Ghostbusters reference among the track titles (‘Total Protonic Reversal’) and the line ‘Bring Home The Motherlode, Barry’ comes courtesy of Panos Cosmatos’ wonky sci-fi horror Beyond The Black Rainbow.
Now, that’s not really all that you need to know about this heaving record of muscular, greyscale psychedelia but it’s certainly a start.
The motley crew of underground UK rock stalwarts that make up the JAAW initialism are, on thunderous bass, Jason Stoll of Mugstar and Sex Swing fame, Therapy’s Andy Cairns on grizzled guitars, the belligerent stickman-ship of Adam Betts (Three Trapped Tigers), and holding it all together is the cloaked electronics and pristinely beefed production from Big Lad’s Wayne Adams.
Opener ‘Thoughts and Prayers (Mean Nothing)’ bursts out of the blocks like a hare being pegged by a pneumatic drill. Its claustrophobic industrial cacophony setting the tone with howled vocals smothered in the same burning static as the cartwheeling guitars. And then there’s ‘Hellbent on Happiness’ which is a rampaging drag race of a track, the audio equivalent of the Mad Max: Fury Road car chase.
It’s not all breakneck propulsion either. JAAW mix it up with slower boom bap beats on ‘Reality Crash’, decking out the oppressive fuzz with jittery electronics that let in just a little glint of light. And the aforementioned hulking centrepiece – ‘Bring Home The Motherlode, Barry’ – is all menacing palm-muted riffs and punched percussion which uncoils whip-quick, lurching into gloomy despondent psych via huge walls of wrangled distortion.
Considering the sonic territory that they’re navigating, this will inevitably draw comparisons with fellow discordant supergroup, Holy Scum. Sticking with the cinematic correlation, JAAW are like the older sibling who would let you stay up late with them watching films like The Toxic Avenger and Street Trash whereas Holy Scum would more likely inflict Salo or Irreversible upon you. Both supergroups have their merits. If you’re looking for a deep exploration of the dark night of the soul, you might not find what you’re looking for with Supercluster but, if a rollicking good time, formed from sheet metal guitars, a powerhouse drummer gone spasmodic, and barrelling bass lines strapped to the overclocked engine of a runaway rollercoaster sounds like your sort of thing, JAAW are an army of four willing to go to war for you.
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Tue May 23 16:00:40 GMT 2023Angry Metal Guy
Industrial metal, for as long as it has been around, doesn’t have many peaks or leaders outside of the usual suspects (Godflesh, Killing Joke, Ministry), and even then within that pool there’s a lot of division.1 A handful of younger bands, like the solid releases last year from Lament Cityscape and Hold Me Down, wear the badges of these influences and other big industrial names like Nine Inch Nails proudly while still succeeding in finding a modern industrial voice. But what do we need to move the genre even more forward? Prog? Horror? Robots? New Khonsu album?2 A supergroup? If your answer was supergroup, then look no further than the UK ensemble of JAAW and their heavyweight debut Supercluster.
Smashing together the legacy talents of performers from Therapy? (Andy Cairns), Sex Swing (Jason Stoll), Petbrick (Wayne Adams), and Three Trapped Tigers (Adam Betts), one would expect Supercluster to live up to its namesake in wild, noise-drenched grandeur. And to an extent, it does—a cast of this caliber would have a hard time pushing out an album that’s complete drivel. Polished and lean in execution, Supercluster attacks the noisier fringes of alternative rock thrashers (“Thoughts and Prayers (Mean Nothing),” “Hellbent on Happiness”), scratching on the bounds of the screechy stoner romp of Unsane. Also, true to the brooding post-punk pulse of moodier Killing Joke tunes, JAAW too finds a home in crackling, wailing numbers with a hypnotic stomp (“Reality Crash,” “The Dead Drop). But for all its build-in tenure and talk something seems to be missing.
SUPERCLUSTER by JAAW
Unfortunately, relying on traditional song structures and subduing added noise elements on Supercluster keep it from truly excelling. It’s not a problem inherently that JAAW holds the history of industrial metal close to the chest—Cairns’ twangy jagged guitar stumbling grew up around the 90s industrial push after all. In turn, the standard chorus-driven nature of the opening trio of tracks slows down the journey to “Total Protonic Reversal,” the first time where the collective of talents, particularly those of kitmaster Betts. Despite this middle experimental section being different, it’s still not particularly engaging, with the safely dialed-in drone that punctuates the far too lengthy “Bring Home the Motherload, Barry.” Cairns continued reliance on mic distortion for any sort of vocal memorability doesn’t help here either—he almost drops it for a moment as JAAW evokes a full synth swell post-rock Neurosis, but the music overpowers his mild undulations.
Of course, JAAW can’t help but lay down a few exciting segments throughout the highly textural exploration of Supercluster. Piercing and shuddering synth lines squirm and hiss to introduce rhythmic pulses (“Reality Crash,” “Rot”), even if that same assertive attitude doesn’t carry through the whole track. And with Nailbomb in mind but a touch more quirky and punky in execution, “Hellbent on Happiness” lands just at the right moment to help guide the album toward its conclusion. Speaking of, the jangly closer “Army of Me” ties together the best of what JAAW promises—tilted guitar crunches, snappy snare syncopation, hypnotic and wild digital rhythms. But there’s one big problem: Björk wrote and performed this song originally and her sense of psychedelic whimsy just works better. I don’t mind a supergroup coming together for a fun tribute assembly, but Supercluster as JAAW’s mission statement needs to bend that recognizable attack in a manner more fitting of their own identity.
Coming across as a sum of the industrial music that the members of JAAW probably enjoy fully, Supercluster means well but fulfills my cybernetic desires only partially. Drawing assistance from backgrounds in noise rock and alternative rock could have lent a stronger edge to this outing were those elements screeching upfront—unpleasant but undeniable. Instead, Supercluster feels painfully safe, albeit too buttoned up to be bad. A few tracks do possess that chaotic magic (“Rot,” “The Dead Drop,” “Army of Me”) but when a small division of the album has me waiting for the rest, it’s a bit tough to call it a success. Nevertheless, the talent potential of the JAAW clan is tease enough to hope that the next cluster of industrial-aiming tunes from this noisy quartet delivers.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Svart Records | Bandcamp
Websites: jaawband.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/jawband
Releases Worldwide: May 26th, 2023
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Sat Jun 10 14:22:23 GMT 2023