Part Chimp - IV

The Quietus

There is something about London’s bruised cultists Part Chimp that has always harboured both jaw-shattering awe and tightrope-teetering ridiculousness. The unapologetic, from-the-bowels-of Hell sludge they have dredged up over the last seventeen years comes at you in a myriad of ways: it's archaic, like pre-dawn pagan guttural mantras; it's Herculean, David vs Goliath iconography etched in sledgehammer noise and funereal riffs; it's anarchic, making the walls sweat blood before imploding in a Poltergeist twist of pinprick white light; yet it is also at times simplistic, base, even (dare I say it) silly.

Yet it is next-level cathartic – washed clean in the hot scree of white noise. Tim Cedar, Joe McLaughlin, Iain Hinchcliffe and Jon Hamilton take their brand of searing cerebellum strippers very seriously - but at the same time it has always been double-dipped in a sense of beating the fun back into you. Walking the blade-thin line between raw ferocity and sly, deceptive laconicism has been done by quite a few noise bands over the years, but very few (like The Melvins or Cows) are able to make it a tectonic statement of infinite appeal. And while they are nowhere as prolific as the former – their last, the brilliantly destructive Thriller, came out in 2009 - they haven't been dormant either. A show last year in a crypt in Camberwell threatened to wake the dead and kill the tympanic membrane of the living.

Their modus operandi is carved into granite and scraped into skin, so it should come as no surprise really that their fourth album, Iv, doesn't really vary the template. They have nothing to prove; from the onset the record is a guided tour into the myriad depths of aural destruction. ’Namekuji’ kicks off with piano, a downturn operatic intro, before the fuzz wall crashes through, a tsunami of noise that is the sweat-coated embrace of a euphoric pit partner - it’s that dirge drawl that is like coming home… The riffs continually pulling and sucking at your very being, melting, masticating, metastasizing... The vocals are clearer here than previously thought possible, space inexplicably found for everything where before the caterwaul cast Cedar’s vocals into the subterranean depths. He has always resonated, an esophagus-stripping howl from the nadirs of gnashing-teeth nihilism, yet it always felt the severity of the death march drawl meant there was no place on this battleground for the organic, the living. The sonic brute force trauma hasn’t been downgraded, however - instead the mix has spread the blasted landscape wide open.

There are songs here that step away from the dirge and break into something close to a sprint. It is all still deafening of course – ‘Mapolean’ has a more insistent rolling, a pile driving propulsion underscored by the meatiest of chords doused in serrated punk; ‘The Saturn Superstition’ a simplistic two chord monster that could be clipped Fu Manchu nonsensical viscera if not for HInchcliffe’s warping solo soaring over a mewling mess dipped in teeth-shattering grit and gruel. ‘RoRo’ rings heavily of the stoner rock stalwarts of the 90s (I hear Australian band Tumbleweed here, albeit with a Desert Sessions blasted-speaker upgrade), rocketing down the highway, Mad Max metal.

As always it’s the plodders, the pounders, the punishers that stand head and shoulders above the rest. ‘Bouncer’s Dream’ (possibly the nightmare inversion of a dream that the beloved dog from Neighbours might have) is a homunculus incrementally building in stature and strength, featuring some of the best coalescing riffs and ebb-and-flow volume strands on the album, the psych swirl at the edges holding echoes of Cedar’s tenure playing with equally chaotic noise merchants Hey Colossus. ‘Solid Gone’ maintains the bad-juju blues that these guys conjure so well, a hypnotic metal blues requiem that still remains incessantly and inexplicably melodic, a jagged earworm that serrates as it soothes. ‘Bad Boon’ is downer rock amplified a thousand-fold, a broken guitar strum played with flayed fingers and nodded-off insouciance before crunching into a cement-mixer squall about strange parties, strange people, and stranger comedowns (with jangling string space, spaced-out scuzz pedals and temporal-shift riffs).

‘Red Mallard’ takes funereal plodding to its inexorable nexus, a jackboot-dragging march over concrete slabs of noise while Cedar’s vocals flit at the edges, lending the melody that spears the song away from the flaming mass grave and towards the misted light a la Mono. It’s a brutal three minutes forty-five seconds that also retains abject beauty – the fulcrum which Part Chimp have hinged on all along. There have been biblical aural meltdowns, scouring rages and hoarse squalls – closer ‘A Lil’ Bit O’ Justice’ manages to cram it all in its elongated end time – and Iv proves, if proving was needed, that Part Chimp are masters of us all.

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Drowned In Sound 90

During the Napster-era at the beginning of the millennium, bands from everywhere were being discovered from all sorts of corners of the world (for instance the very loose fitting 'scream/emo' movement in American post-hardcore around this time) which slowly grew in notoriety until even some of these acts gained the distinction of earning a "big pay-day reunion tour" with American Football or even At the Drive-In perhaps being the most famous.

London's Part Chimp formed in 2000 and slowly mastered their craft as the UK's best sludge/noise rock band, taking their cues from the previous decade's Iron Monkey (who have also reformed this year) and even the Americans to task on their genre. However, never really ascended beyond 'cult' status. They existed in an odd place where they were simultaneously ahead of their time and behind it, being pretty much the only reputable band of the genre in the UK at the time, but being picked up by Mogwai's esteemed Rock Action Records, who also release this, the band's return IV. But since then, Mogwai themselves have broken into the mainstream, mostly due to their soundtrack work, and due to bands such as Glasgow's Holy Mountain, 'sludge metal' is now a well-respected genre in the UK.

So Part Chimp couldn't really have timed their revival any better, given the circumstances, to reclaim their throne atop the at-metal throne. After breaking up amicably in 2011, the London band's final statement came in 2009's epic Thriller which genuinely felt the culmination of a band who had reached their peak at time. Over the course of three albums in the Noughties, Part Chimp were remarkably consistent and got better with every release. However, they never really easily fit into the UK metal scene mould - as say, their peers in Palehorse - despite their excellent song craft, largely because they so clearly looked like an indie band taking on a heavier genre. So while it seemed a shame at the time that they came to their end, it equally seems fitting that they've returned after a six-year-hiatus to finish off what they started.

And IV certainly doesn't hang about. Opener and first single 'Namekuji' starts things off with a short piano-chord struck imperial march, before crashing into a brain rattling riff based on the same melody which sums up the following 40-or-so minutes pretty perfectly. 'MapoLeon' steps things up into the next gear with a crushing, relatively fast-paced rager, and we are off to the races. Part Chimp's remarkably simple set-up is really meant to be experienced live, but cranking up this record as it is supposed to be heard, one feels the pure joy exuding from the quartet's embrace of all things LOUD. The band may not be re-inventing the wheel here, but there's such pleasure to hearing this style of music done well that there is an undeniable quality to just letting yourself as listener drift off into the noise.

Like the opener, 'Solid Gone' and 'Bad Boon' are good examples of the band's basic structure: play a hypnotic riff, blast it, build on it some more, and then make it even bigger. It helps that between the relatively simple riffs and Tim Cedar's fairly catchy melodies that there is plenty to hang your hat on in IV, but there is also a playfulness to band's songcraft that is highly admirable. 'RoRo' plays with their form a bit, being largely a one-note, psychedelic track, but even within that frame the band find ways to push the envelope further and further. Meanwhile, shortest song 'The Saturn Superstition' is also probably the album's most memorable, largely due to it's faster pace and catchy chorus which demands the listener's attention.

Overall, this is an excellent return from an always consistent band who's legacy has grown and grown over the years since their depature in 2011. At the album reaches its gloomy conclusion in the slower jams 'Rad Mallard' and 'A Lil' Bit of Justice' one is left excited to see where the band will go next, as well as itching to see their excessively loud live show. This isn't a return to form, merely a continuation of an already extremely high one. The kings are back.