Playin' in Time With the Deadbeat

Slug Guts ain’t for the fainthearted. Followers of Nick Cave’s early band The Birthday Party, Feedtime, or The Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid should thrill to the dark menace and unnerving cacophony of the a seven-piece Australian band Slug Guts. Their second album opens with “Scum,” with the song’s guitars stinging with whip-like barbs that recall the work of the late, great Rowland S. Howard (Birthday Party, Crime & the City Solution). There's also a saxophone—a high-impact addition to the band—asphyxiating on its own viscous, bilious notes. Clearly, Slug Guts aren't lightening up after 2010’s Howlin’ Gang, with unsettling songs like “Stranglin’ You Too” and “Do You Wanna Hang Right There?” full of brittle guitars that snag and tear, metallic snare drums that vibrate with cavernous echo, and vocalist Jimi Kritzler moving from feral snarl to pained yowl to soul-searching mumble as needed. It all reeks of despair and tortured cores, a new level of goth-punk beastliness heretofore unseen. Nick Cave, what hath thou wrought?