70%
Joe Pesci—At Our Expense! (2009)
Details
Music recorded at The Afternoon Gentlemen’s Practice Rooms, Leeds, April 2009. Vocals recorded at Unit 28, Newcastle, June 2009. Mixed and mastered by Dan Pesci. Released on Bones Brigade Records. Limited to 500 copies.
Band
- Stu Bartlett—Vocals
- Dan Pesci—Guitar and vocals
- Rich—Drums and vocals
Tracks
- Sticking my carbon footprint up your arse
- Stagnate
- I’m not a pessimist (it’s just that we’re all fucked)
- Scorn of humanity
- Beating Robert Mugabe to death…
- Hyper-real
- The old stats test
- Funkhouser
- Mindless zombified fucks
- Wasting your life in a dead end existence
- Cure vs profit
- Despair is setting in
- Brain-dead beer bong, is Stino’s epitaph
- Plato complex
- Be quick or be dead
- Project 2501
- Smelly John Pierre
Review
Hailing from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, grindcore band Joe Pesci (I’m guessing) take their name from the American actor, comedian and musician of the same name (Joseph Frank Pesci).
I’m not entirely certain what I think about that. Surely there are an unlimited number of names they could have chosen: Plateaux Department, Huglfing, or Automated Refraction System for example.
Talk about grindcore and it won’t be too long before you stumble on Napalm Death who really laid the groundwork for the genre, and ex-Anthrax / ex-SOD / ex-Nuclear Assault bassist Dan Lilker’s outfit Brutal Truth. There are a couple of acts you wouldn’t want to have to follow.
It’s clear that the band didn’t have a massive budget (not a judgment, simply an observation—not everyone can pick up a mainstream record label recording studio bill). The production is quite raw, quite punk-y — which may attract some, and alienate others. It does mean, though that the volume balance between the various film audio clips that are scattered throughout the work isn’t consistent with the music that follows. It doesn’t bother me too much but I imagine that it may annoy some.
(Having got this far in writing my review I have report that the album has already finished. All 17 tracks. Back to the start again…)
I read on a blog somewhere that when the album was sent to be mastered the rough mix was burned to CD rather than the final. Sure, it might have been nice to have a little clearer production but what we have still conveys the attitude and the skill required to write and record such a technical, heavily distorted, down-tuned, throat-ripping album.
And so to the music. It’s grindcore. It’s British, high-speed, blast-beat-happy, growl-tastic grindcore. If the song titles are anything to go by then I imagine the lyrics are humorous (but all I can hear is “Waaah! Wah!”). There are no microsongs, as such, but the shortest track is 38 seconds and the longest 1′ 22″.
There are some really nice riffs like the one that opens “Funkhouser” (track 8) and “Smelly John Pierre” (track 17). And a lot of just-get-me-through-the-track blasts of noise and shouting. But hey! that’s grindcore.
Conclusion
I’d quite happily listen to this album. It’s the kind of music that I do rather enjoy going to sleep to (note: not because of). It’s a little bit ‘high-pitch shouty’ for my liking—I prefer a good solid, deep roar, but it’s not out of keeping with the rest of the music.
The one thing I don’t really get are the audio clips from films. I just find them a little distracting, but I guess each to their own.
Review score: 70%