Clockcleaner
Babylon Rules
Load Records
By Jose Fritz
Mummification as a specific subtype of BDSM is defined as sexual gratification from restraining someone in a non-harmful manner by wrapping them in materials like saran wrap, tape, or bandages. I think of this while looking at the cover art; the bands faces wrapped in packing tape. Are they just being weird, or in addition to being obnoxious and violent, also colossally perverse degenerates?
Ironically they hail from Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. But this isn’t the music of love, brotherly or otherwise. It’s the real music of Philadelphia a city with the highest murder rate in America, and neighborhoods that sport loving brotherly signs reading “No white people allowed,” and the eloquent “Pigs get out.” Now I can abide by such signage, but it’s in the bad neighborhoods around North Philly where the barbeque is better than the smack and the bands are tougher than the police. That’s the allure of Philly: it’s a city where the best cheesesteak is served underneath a highway overpass and the most famous museum is full of dead bodies.
Babylon Rules is Clockcleaner’s third release. They put out an EP called The Hassler in 2004 and a prior LP, Nevermind, in 2006. They’ve come a long way. That first EP sounded fugly like the most depraved lo-fi punk that G.G. Allen ever puked up after pounding a bottle of Fleischman's vodka. It was dirty like a pair of jeans left underneath a Harley Davidson motorcycle over the winter to sop up the oil. I’m not going to tell you they’ve become civilized or even house broken but they have calmed down a smidgen; maybe a half step between Pissed Jeans and Killdozer.
It’s a good smidgen. In that ass-crack sized slice of breathing room they learned to play their instruments, and even how to record them without a blazing wall of line-in distortion. Hassler curdled all the albuminous protein in our brains. The well-received Nevermind by comparison was just a series of Big Black inspired nowave tantrums. But Babylon is more precise, more calculated and more dangerous overall. They create a sense of drama in the songs really drawing you in close so they can get to know you and offend you personally.
There is a reason that Philadelphia Weekly dubbed them the city’s most hated band. Listen, I don’t want to give you the idea that they’re always behaving like conceited assholes. They are actual genuinely certified assholes and that has a real entertainment value. They were banned for life from one venue because Sharkey pissed all over the headlining band’s merch table -- that is innovative. In the span of a music geeks life bands will come and bands will go but sincerity is forever.
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