From the moment guitarist Mihali Savoulidis opened the track with his clumsy, if not imbecilic journey through the derivative succession of notes he adorably considered melodic phrasing, I knew I was in for a real treat. I settled in and was immediately rewarded when bassist Zdenek Gubb decided to arbitrarily pluck away at some strings in an attention deficit driven attempt to entertain himself. This was to set the tone for the rest of the show.

A stop. One beat.

The rest of the band weakly stumbled in on the one, led by the soulless, watered down smatterings of drummer WhoGives A. Shit and piano player Worst Member of the Band. Savoulidis strummed generically alongside his band for between zero and ∞ minutes before deciding to quack into the microphone like a lazy yokel. His possibly word-based lyrics resonated across the crowd.

“Have ya had the jam filled man da cigga sip sooly and sands in lamps got that shit down ya filleting can a (sound of chewing on cheek)-dum tread.”

After a couple minutes of Savoulidis making stupid sounds come out of his stupid, goofy face, the band decided to keep sounding like shit. By 2:30 into the track the band decided they didn’t want to play the same parts anymore so they all just played whatever the fuck they wanted, none of which was good. Every step of the way they were sure to remove any semblance of soul in a seemingly aggressive attempt to damage Mother Music beyond repair.

Just when I thought watching four boring guys sound check separately together couldn’t get any better, it didn’t. At about five minutes in, they melded from the low-key vamp they had been leaking out for what seemed like an eternity to an effect-driven collection of riffs before deciding they didn’t want to do that anymore. They changed tempos for a handful of beats then decided that was boring, and went into the verse again before realizing that was dumb and deciding what the song really needed was fast, dynamic-free jamming. This came courtesy of Savoulidis of course, who moved his fingers effortlessly across the neck of the guitar, dragging a sound from the instrument that I’m sure was the musical language equivalent of “kill me. Please don’t make me hurt music anymore, I’m a beautiful guitar and I’m being forced against my will to hurt what I love most.”

At the 11-minute mark I really wondered if they were still playing the same shitty song. Before I could wrap my head around the sound to determine this, the band broke down into the rehashed strumming pattern from the start of the track. It wasn’t long though before they set out offending the universe with their molested form of reggae. After peppering in the word Jamaica a few times and squawking some cartoonishly accented words at the microphone, Savoulidis gathered the other three offenders, deciding a 13-minute song was good enough to prove how epic they are.

RATINGS:

Generic Level: I was so happy it contained nothing new musically whatsoever so I wouldn’t be threatened by something unique. However, the way he belched out his vocals made it seem not unoriginal enough. 4 out of 5 stars.

Jammitude: Plenty of musical masturbation but the sections were in clearly rehearsed splices, which took me out of full jammitude. 3 out of 5 stars.

Soul (lack of): It couldn’t have sounded any more watered down! Finally, a band got it right by vanilla pasting up a style of music that was already at skim milk levels, at best. It's as if they just take the exact stuff they practice from their books and go straight to the stage with no thought of turning them into musical ideas or communicating anything with passion. Nothing says music like hearing a sequence of notes played with no regard to musicality or heart. No sir, it's all about how fast those fingers can move! Soul schmoul, that's what I always say. 5 out of 5 stars.