This musical collaboration has induced much Roger-Moore-styled-eyebrow-raising and been deemed the oddest pairing since Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison flat-shared. Woe betide ye doubters. Prepare to rawk on the wild side. For Loutallica is a wondrously odd and oddly wondrous thing.
Inspired by German expressionist writer Frank Wedekind’s Lulu plays, this is a concept album that combines poetically gloomy lyrics delivered in a dulcet drone, against a backdrop of Brecht/Velvets-styled metal riffage.
Opener ‘Brandenburg Gate’ dwarfs the listener at the monolith where a mad Caligari-esque Reed tells us that “I would cut my legs and tits off when I think of Boris Karloff and Kinski”. The pounding and pummeling of industrial machinery-inspired sludge-doom riffing enters to crush the sensitive soul. The effect is unsettling, but that’s the point. The subject matter is dark and disturbing. Berlin is transposed to Weimar Germany and the cacophony of mid-’80s ‘Garage Days’ thrash jams is playing at The Blue Angel.
‘The View’ pushes heavy, repetitive riffing to the point of oblivion, as Lou’s monotone anti-musical delivery strangles itself in contorted despair. Discordant violin drags ascending feedback and frantic thrashing into a bloodied dog fight in ‘Pumping Blood’. This is the sound of the Exploding Plastic Ineviatble.
Misantrophy and disgust wander amidst the disagreeable sonic shards of ‘Little Dog’ whilst the demanding and trying ‘Dragon’ paints bleak landscapes under deadened skies. And after surviving that journey ‘Junior Dad’ offers a 19-minute excursion into the twisted torment of a world of terrible beauty shorn of madness and written by reason.
Exhausting, brilliant and deranged.