Room 101, Demo

Don’t let the cover of the Clash’s “White Riot” tacked on at the end of this album fool you; Room 101 is a far cry from ’70s-style punk. In recorded form, at least, self-described one-man-band Roburt Reynolds’ Room 101 project owes a hell of a lot more from late-’80s NYC noise-rock like Cop Shoot Cop, Unsane, Barkmarket, and Foetus. Demo is a tightly-wound squall of noise and bottom-heavy thunder, with scraping, shrieking guitars that feel like the aural equivalent of shards of broken glass under bare feet, snarling/yowling vocals, and turgid, NoMeansNo-esque bass stomp.

Reynolds’ Room 101 is at its best when he mines a slinking, mechanized, fuzz-heavy groove, rather than veering into the full-on “punk” realm (like on the pounding “Plastic Bag Hat”). On tracks like “Living Dead Man,” “Human Skin Shawl Sweater,” and “Unfranchise My Heart,” Reynolds drives his machine forward relentlessly, channeling raw, misanthropic fury, and it’s a beautiful thing to behold. The tracks are like Gang of Four getting knifed on the NY subway, except in a good way. Surprisingly, in spite of the inherent chaos of the music, the whole skronking, jagged-edged mess is tight as fuck, as focused and frighteningly coherent as some kind of flesh-destroying death ray from the future.

There’s some kind of underlying theme of control and domination going on here, I think, but to be honest, I’m not paying much attention to the lyrics, although the “project” name refers to the Ministry of Love in 1984, and the songs are apparently harsh critiques of modern society’s materialism and all that. For my part, I’m content to just wallow in the miasma of noise and the generally apocalyptic feel of it all as my brain melts.

(Oh, and for the “White Riot” cover? It’s the real oddball on the album, a fairly straight-up version of the Clash classic, played kind of bland and incorporating even a Joe Strummer-esque Brit accent and the handclaps from the original. It’s fun and all, but it just makes me want to go grab my Clash albums off the shelf. But don’t let that dissuade you; the rest of the album’s pretty fucking great on its own.)