Necropolis

Er anyway, Columbus ne'er-do-wells Necropolis have a new album out this week, The Hackled Ruff & Shoulder Mane (Columbus Discount Records). It's the slop-happy five-piece's first full-length, the culmination of constant studio tinkering and a few years–worth of onstage bang-ups. The band has been able to translate some of the wham-bam-thank-you-mam of their live cavorting with recording clarity, which has something to do with having CDR (it's a studio and a label) engineers BJ Holesapple and Adam Smith in their folds, and their "Too Many Creeps" meets "Smack Bunny Baby" racket has made it to tape with its balls intact.

What Necropolis does best, though, is shoot weirdo noisescapes and more hooks than a Brit has crooked teeth through a roundabout of time changes and stop-start hysterics. Lead vocalist Bo Davis squawks and shrieks while he and fellow guitarist Smith trade riffs and noisy filigree quid pro quo. "Ultraviolet" is a particularly infectious earwig, shards of guitar and bubbling, underlying keyboards grappling with Davis aphorisms like, "I read it on the back of a t-shirt." Elsewhere, "The Knife Song" mixes prurient and hostility, Emily Davis' vocals—often lost in Necropolis' live melee—taking the spotlight. The cut segues into "To The Bar," which spikes a post-punk vein (accented by Kyle Halberger's top-shelf drumming) and reveals the band firing all its guns to good effect. From there it's to the album's highlight, "The Governor's Wife," a focused streak of sharpened six-strings and blunted grooves.

That The Hackled Ruff never lets up speaks to Necropolis' diligence. They've made a record that perfectly encapsulates that which they are: a fusing of scrappy virtues and studio meticulousness. It's off-the-cuff, but not lo-fi, noisy but not noisy. Kudos, kids.
- Stephen Slaybaugh - WeColumbus

Remember those weird nerds in high school? You know, the ones you couldn't tell if they were just a bit off or really closet killers? Well, they went to Ohio State University, listened to Rocket From the Tombs, and christened themselves "Necropolis." And now they're punk nerds.



This Columbus, Ohio, five pieces' debut album, The Hackled Ruff & Shoulder Mane, proves these musicians truly grasp the spirit behind the great proto- and post-punk bands of the late '70s and early '80s without any cheesy neo dance-punk trappings. And though I can already hear gripes from the peanut gallery ("We already have too many Gang of Four disciples!"), Necropolis injects enough good-ol' fashioned Kessler into its veins to ensure no pretension in this batch of toe-tapping tunes.


Necropolis stands apart from other post-punk wannabes because 1) they play music with hairy, ugly balls, and 2) they glean they're inspiration from Ohio bands, not New York or London legends. Pere Ubu and Devo immediately spring to mind, as vocalist/guitarist Bo Davis' vocal delivery sounds like a cross between the nerdy inhumanness of Mark Mothersbaugh and the nervous craze of Dave Thomas, without ripping either off. Tempering these yelps is vocalist/keyboardist Emily. Her voice, at once playful and sexy, winks an eye at the listener: "Come hither, but I may play a nasty trick on you!"


But none of this voice stuff would matter if the songs weren't so damn good. Catchy without the bubblegum-induced canker sores, they beckon repeat spins. The album opens with "Driving the Interstate," whose two opposing guitar lines pull against each other until the drums enter and tell them both to get in order. "Colors & #'s" begins with muted guitar stabs, like Fugazi's "Lockdown," while the bass moves like an assembly line putting all the parts together. These songs virtually burst open with nervous energy.


Necropolis, in avoiding a one-dimensional album, switches the pace of The Hackled Ruff & Shoulder Mane often. Between every couple of rompers, they place a "breather" song. These tunes prove to be just as good as the rockers: the Emily-sung "Stalking Mark E Smith Around NYC" and "The Knife Song" leave you wanting more of her voice out front. Fortunately, when she and Bo combine forces, the whole stands taller than the parts. In "The Governer's Wife"(sic), they sing a few lines from Pere Ubu's "Real World," off of the classic The Modern Dance. This vocal meshing works wonders in Necropolis' homage to Ubu, swirling amidst a flurry of keyboards and squawking six-strings.


The pacing isn't perfect, however. My only complaint stems from the unnecessary noise on the album. I'm all for odd cacophony, but the last two minutes of "Colors & #'s" are downright difficult; the kind of feedback that makes your eyes water and nose run. Also, though only 1:17 in length, "Cea1620's" distorted voices swirl around the mix like a stubborn turd that just won't flush down the toilet.


However, these drawbacks, put together, total only four minutes of The Hackled Ruff & Shoulder Mane. The remainder provides listeners with forty minutes of groovy punk madness. Necropolis rocks hard enough to engage straightforward rockers, but throws in enough weird guitar lines and awkward noises to satisfy the artist/hipster in all of us. With keys, two guitars, and an airtight rhythm section you can shake your booty to, new blips rise to surface with each new listen. Plus, Necropolis brings you back to the industrial wasteland that inspired Ohio punk bands in the 1970s. Hopefully, Necropolis' river of creativity won't catch fire and burn away
- Mark Karges - Delusions of Adequacy (dotcom)

DEAD ANGEL's Youth of America Intern listened to this one night before fleeing to Portland to escape the diabolical clutches of the Moon Men, and his response was less than enthusiastic, so I was inclined to approach it with caution. After hearing the record (and this is an LP, by the way, although it's also available in the shiny aluminum format for the more "modern" listener), I think the problem is simply that he's too young to remember the glorious days of No Wave. The band is a five-piece from Columbus, Ohio who got together in 2004 to feed at the poisoned tit of skronk rock, and in spite of its modern vintage, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a long-lost artifact from NYC's No Wave scene circa 1978-1980. It's all spastic thrashing about that sometimes resolves into something vaguely resembling straightforward punk-pop before flying off in different directions again, with a guitarist who favors galloping figures and a pounding drummer who provides some semblance of a coherent direction while the others bleat and squawk. They also have at least two singers (one male with an unnerving tendency toward raving madness, one female who alternately sings like a real human being and chirps like Le Rita Mitsouko) who trade off between songs and sometimes rave together. I find the guitarist's commitment to screeching, wailing, and generally fucked-up noises deeply moving, not to mention the band's fondness for pure-bred psychotic noise. Not all of his playing is cranky noise, though; there's plenty of manic surf-guitar, tornado guitar, and melodic punk jizz worthy of East Bay Ray happening here. This is not noise, but rather extremely noisy rock that shambles on violently over insistent beats. It's whacked-out shit, to be sure, but highly energetic whacked-out shit that's far more focused and together than it appears at first glance. (Or is that first listen?) Think of this as the audio equivalent to crisis management, or perhaps a drug intervention gone terribly, terribly wrong. So much of this sounds like a throwback to the classic years of revved-up, out-of-control No Wave that it's like post-rock never happened. Who would have ever thought the No-Wave revivial would begin in Columbus, of all places?


- RFK - http://www.monotremata.com/dead/da08/music_reviews.html

Er anyway, Columbus ne'er-do-wells Necropolis have a new album out this week, The Hackled Ruff & Shoulder Mane (Columbus Discount Records). It's the slop-happy five-piece's first full-length, the culmination of constant studio tinkering and a few years–worth of onstage bang-ups. The band has been able to translate some of the wham-bam-thank-you-mam of their live cavorting with recording clarity, which has something to do with having CDR (it's a studio and a label) engineers BJ Holesapple and Adam Smith in their folds, and their "Too Many Creeps" meets "Smack Bunny Baby" racket has made it to tape with its balls intact.

What Necropolis does best, though, is shoot weirdo noisescapes and more hooks than a Brit has crooked teeth through a roundabout of time changes and stop-start hysterics. Lead vocalist Bo Davis squawks and shrieks while he and fellow guitarist Smith trade riffs and noisy filigree quid pro quo. "Ultraviolet" is a particularly infectious earwig, shards of guitar and bubbling, underlying keyboards grappling with Davis aphorisms like, "I read it on the back of a t-shirt." Elsewhere, "The Knife Song" mixes prurient and hostility, Emily Davis' vocals—often lost in Necropolis' live melee—taking the spotlight. The cut segues into "To The Bar," which spikes a post-punk vein (accented by Kyle Halberger's top-shelf drumming) and reveals the band firing all its guns to good effect. From there it's to the album's highlight, "The Governor's Wife," a focused streak of sharpened six-strings and blunted grooves.

That The Hackled Ruff never lets up speaks to Necropolis' diligence. They've made a record that perfectly encapsulates that which they are: a fusing of scrappy virtues and studio meticulousness. It's off-the-cuff, but not lo-fi, noisy but not noisy. Kudos, kids.
- Stephen Slaybaugh - WeColumbus

Even if I hadn't listen to this record I would know that the Fall have contorted at least one person in this band's brain because they have a song called "Stalking Mark E Smith Around NYC" and THAT was enough for me to give this a spin. And yes, there is a definite Fall thing going on as well as a lot of other twisted 'before all the rules were written' berserk-out "punk" stuff along with later freaks like the Butthole Surfers and mixing in some of that "maybe the nerds and weirdos DO know how to have a wilder party than the jocks" goofiness - Smashin' Transistors

Now you can imagine how much a hate to disagree with my elders, but this time I can't just bite my tongue. Respectfully, Scott, there is more to be said about this record. Do I love it? Kinda. Have I played it a lot? Yes. It is impeccably played (sometimes too much so) and it sounds fantastic. Also, it is perhaps the most loving tribute to Pere Ubu ever put to record. It's really strange. These folks are all over the map, but it works most of the time. You might be able to detect fleeting moments of weird dance-punk, particularly in the singer's Ex Models-esque spazzy yelp, but dig deeper and a track like "Colors & #'s" is a virtual explosion of frantic and brawny (yes) new wave with a synth meltdown at the end that sounds like a sonic loveletter to Allen Ravenstine. "Ultraviolet" has a whole section of dub effects and playing that actually works. The last song on the first side, "Innerspace," dips a toe in so many styles of rock n' roll it's kind of disconcerting, but it's not in any sort of Mr. Bungle way, and it really is the song, and it fits. The fact that it ends with a section that is equally Pere Ubu, Neu!, and Th' Faith Healers, just makes perfect sense. I'm really harping on this Pere Ubu thing, huh? Well, flip the record over and witness how everything begins to stretch out into avant-garageland. More off-kilter wave-slash with real solid rock chops and more turns into dub. But it's at the end when the worship/homage really makes itself apparent. "To The Bar" starts off like something resembling a rock song that you can see a hundred kids jumping around like mad to, then it breaks down and switches gears into a high-velocity trip where they directly quote Ubu, "out in the real world/in real time..." as it erupts with noisy soloing, screaming synths, crashing everything. The last song, "Cloud 151" (yup, you read that right; "Cloud 149"), might as well be an Ubu cover. This sounds like an indictment of this album, but it's not. I really like it. The fact that these folks are from Columbus, Ohio makes it that much more understandable and laudable. Based on this record, Necropolis are sure to make some street waves (nyuk nyuk).(EEK)
(Columbus Discount Records // www.columbusdiscountrecords.com) - EEK TerminalBoredom.com

NECROPOLIS: The Hackled Ruff And Shoulder Mane
Members of this Columbus, Ohio combo run the CDR label, which has released records by sub-buzzed bands like Times New Viking and El Jesus De Magico, but their own collective might be the best of the bunch. True, Bo Davis' warble sounds sort of like James Chance and maybe there's some herky-jerky going on. Otherwise, no neu wave here, as these potentates of panic-rock aim to stumble through astral alleys haunted by discarded '76 Pere Ubu reels and your last good memory of the Pixies. "Stalking Mark E. Smith Around NYC" is a swell distortoshuffle, and "To The Bar" and "Cloud 151" are fun chunks. The rest is mostly a grab-bag bunch-up of imploding synths, reverbed guitar amps getting kicked, rust belt poetry, choppy riffs, scruffy dub and a PBR case of nervous tension. And tension leads to wanting to get out of tight, creepy, noisy places quick-like, which The Hackled Ruff does just in time.
- Eric Davidson


- Eric Davidson CMJ.COM