Pissed Jeans - King of Jeans

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5...according to our Brian on Fri 14 Aug, 2009.

.....Pissed Jeans!! 'King of Jeans' is a smart follow up to the collapsing gutter squall of 'Hope For Men'. If you ain' t heard this dirty, brooding psychotic punk mess of a band then you'd better get whip smart fucking quick. A frankly unhealthy blend of Jesus Lizard, 'Bleach' era Nirvana & The Stooges, they're genuinely unnerving & feral enough to sear your face clean off in places. The drums sound like they've fallen off some stoner truck, the guitarist raises shards of fuzzy squealing junk out of his guitar and the bass player pummels those strings with vicious abandon. Oh the singer. He spent the last gig I saw them at slamming into the audience with a totally nihilistic bug-eyed fuck-you attitude and was none less remarkable for the fact his mic was broken for the entire gig so you couldn't hear the raspy sludge spilling out of his throat. A right primal, thrilling car wreck of delight, these guys are sneakily hiding that ancient hallowed Sub Pop dirt-rock crown down the front of their soiled threads. I think I may be in scuzzy love with these deranged muppets, this album is bristling with the tunes you really want to hear this week and your mum, no matter how cool, will absolutely hate them so they must be doing summat right. CD/LP, go get filthy.

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If 2005's Shallow was Pissed Jeans coping with moving out of their parents' homes, and 2007's Hope for Men their initial reaction to the mechanical lifestyle of a wage-earner, King of Jeans is their formal and uneasy acceptance of adulthood. Pissed Jeans went ahead and made one hell of a rock
record. Working with renowned producer Alex Newport (who holds a Fudge Tunnel pedigree and has worked with such luminaries as At the Drive-In, The Locust and Sepultura), Pissed Jeans have pushed further to the raw, minimal core of heavy rock music with King of Jeans.
Less frequent are the extended noise passages that made Hope for Men so frightening, replaced with a buffet of riffs capable of feeding Tad for a month. Opener "False Jesii Part 2" (feel free to Google part 1) is classic Pissed Jeans with its circular, fuzz-soaked riff, pounding rhythm section and
unwound vocals, a call to arms against the social lifestyle while admitting that yeah, they could still partake if they wanted. "Half Idiot" calls to mind vintage Birthday Party with its rumbling groove and splayed guitar. "Dream Smotherer," "Lip Ring" and "Dominate Yourself" carry the same massive
weight found in previous cuts like "Secret Admirer" and "I'm Sick," pummeling the listener at a variety of speeds while tackling such issues as office life and the unrequited love of women steeped in ostensibly dumber subcultures. And then there's the Sabbath-built self-defeat of "Spent" and simple
plea of "Request for Masseuse," played as if the loving hands of Blue Cheer's Randy Holden were guiding the session. And this is coming from a band who, while writing this record, spent more time with the first three Danzig albums than most Fiend Club members.
So here it is: King of Jeans. Expect to see these Jeans on the road for a good part of 2009 and 2010, as previous shows have paired them with acts as oddly fitting as Om, Black Dice, Flipper, Boris, Harvey Milk, Mudhoney, and hell, they even played with Sage Francis once.

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