ZapTown

Tobacco
Maniac Meat
Anticon
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Link: http://www.myspace.com/tobacco

I sometimes have dreams about my face melting off. This has been ongoing since first seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark and the end scene with the German soldier’s face turning into a bloody version of melting wax. Not that this is completely a bad thing because I never thought of it to hurt, at least in my dreams, but it’s the whole sequence: face melting, brain turning to goo, monster emerges.

But never in my life would I have envisioned an album that sums up these dreams. But Maniac Meat is the sound of your brain melting. Hell, the album cover is simply frightening enough yet it entrances you (kind of like something out of a classic Troma film) to give it high markings alone.

The album doesn’t really begin. It’s like it has been playing for an eternity and you just so happened to pick up the transmission. And with a song title like “Constellation Dirtbike Head,” you cannot even imagine. The vocals would make Gibby Haynes yell “Oh shit!” as Tobacco warps the words “Don’t eat the berries around you,”while latching on to the back of your skull and leaving you sitting there drooling. Not only is his voice warped, but the sequencer pitch warps the hell out of this man’s words beyond the common filters he uses.

Coming from the leader of the illustrious Black Moth Super Rainbow, it’s not shocking to hear something as bizarre as this. Even some of Tobacco’s songs sounds more like Black Moth Super Rainbow songs: “Heavy Makeup,” and especially “Six Royal Vipers.” It may be on the edge, but these songs are no where at its point of breaking maintaining a sense of accessibility in its danceable rhythms and beats, like “Sweatmother,” which is the equivalent to what I assume to what taking acid and listening to White Zombie would be like.

Beck even makes an appearance for “Fresh Hex” (a song that sounds kind of like the lyrical style of “Loser,” if Beck had balls and wasn’t trying to be the anti-hero of alternative music) and “Grape Aerosmith,” which barely has Beck on it so it almost does not count.

Analog sounds will shred your nerve endings, filters are pushed beyond its breaking point, and words will fizzle like letting your ears ingest a box of pop rocks and Zots all at once. Tobacco has created a mind-altering puppet, and that puppet is hypnotized into thinking it is you.

 Tobacco - Sweatmother (from the album "Maniac Meat") [2:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download