I rose out of bed this morning bright and early at the crack of noon. After a yawn and a stretch, I’m ready for my morning menthol and a little walkabout. So I go wandering out onto the streets of Broad Ripple with a can-do attitude and a joint in my pocket, just looking for something to get into. I end up at my local record store, always good for something to listen to, and start hassling the clerks about what’s new. They put me on to a new Moon Goons track that just dropped. I love Moon Goons just as much as the next guy, so I figured, hey, why not do a review?
If you’re not in the know, then allow me to fill you in on exactly what Moon Goons is. What we’re talking about here is the pioneering force behind some of the weirdest psychedelic rock that Indianapolis had to offer. These self-proclaimed “goblin rockers” write raw jams stuffed with tasty hooks and mind-melting riffs, which bridge the gaps between psychedelia, stoner metal, and several other various burnout genres. Their latest single “Wrath Bath” is only the latest knockout in their ever-growing discography.
“Wrath Bath” leans fairly far into the stoner metal category of what Moon Goons has to offer. It’s a barrage of heavily distorted guitars, crash-heavy drum lines, snarling vocals, and a guitar solo which hits like the first puff off a canister of whippets; don’t do whippets, kids. The effects on the guitars are haunting, ghostly, alien. Alien, like something out of the X-Files. It’s very…I don’t know, digital sound, I guess. Like if you pumped a dial-up modem full of 2-cb and attempted to get it to translate something from an extraterrestrial script into English. It’s a static, climbing sound, somewhat like a theremin, which runs throughout the length of the song. Alongside this is some of the nastiest shredding you’ve ever heard, paired with a heart-stopping rhythm section and gravely vocals, which make you want to rage. “Wrath Bath” is a song meant to inspire its very namesake: wrath. You hear it, and you want to throw a Molotov cocktail through the windshield of a police cruiser, then throw the charred-out remains into neutral and ram that fucker right through an embankment into a quarry where it may explode into a dazzling display of molten steel and irritated plastic.
“Wrath Bath” is streaming everywhere now, so those of us who don’t rise until late in the day have a little treat to wake up to today, don’t we? I would advise you to wait to listen to the track until you can get into your car, so you can be surrounded by a sound system with enough juice to do it justice, but quite frankly, the song may convince you it’s a good idea to slam your slab into a brick wall just to see if you can’t tear the thing down. It’s probably safer you hear it for the first time played through the phone of the clerk at your favorite record store, as I did, or, at the very least, somewhere where your visceral reaction will cause as little collateral damage as possible.
