Ty Segall - Slaughterhouse

Ty Segall said of his latest album that he wanted to create something that sat between Stooges, Hawkwind and Sabbath, "to make a really heavy record: evil, evil space rock. Put a little Satan in space and you got the sound". Well, that's just what Slaughterhouse sounds like - just look at the name. Filled with heinous punk sounds, dark and heavy riffs and vocals echoing and screeching like a man posessed, it's glued together with typical Segall retro-garage sounds and a few harmonies, maybe put in when Satan had gone for lunch.

After working on Hair with White Fence, Segall has taken the slap-dash, grungy noise-rock elements of that album and thrown them into the mix too - it's all still amazingly slap-dash and sounds as though it's been recorded in a room choked by stale smoke risen from the carcass of last night's free-for-all. From opening tracks like 'Death' and 'I Bought My Eyes' with their melodic and harmonious vocals, to the screamy and torturous echoes of 'Slaughterhouse', through to the panic-ridden screams and wails of 'The Tongue' and the rock n roll guitar-carnage of 'Oh Mary', this album is a journey of discovery for Segall, his first venture out without an alliance with someone else. Its meltdowns, would sit well alongside noise-rock acts like APTBS; they share similar sounds but Segall has less reliance on feedback and deep echoing experimental sounds. Slaughterhouse is all more jolty and surprising.

'Tell Me What's Inside Your Heart' holds the obvious San Fran garage influences of Thee Oh Sees and Kelley Stoltz, yet 'Wave Goodbye' is bass-heavy with lots of reverb on the vocals, this must be where the Sabbath influence comes in. The cover of 'Diddy Wah Diddy' (the Bo Diddley song previously covered by Captain Beefheart among others) done in his inimitable crazy, scatty way ends with the line "I don't know what we're doing!" typifying the spontenaeity and the feeling that this all happened without rehearsal. It's more mental than Beefheart himself at times.

Full of rock n roll influences mixed with blazing punk riffs, with repetitive Stooges-like guitars and much more raw excitement than The White Stripes could ever hope for (listen to 'Oh Mary'), Segall is yet another San Franciscan DIY-er with a garage-punk band who is becoming ever-more popular and less and less underground. He is by far the leader of the gang with his breathy and panicky vocals working perfectly alongside garage griminess, being both heavy and hooky at the same time - a hard combination to make good.

Finishing with 'Fuzz War', 10 minutes of strange sounds and uncomfortable hums which add to the idea this album really could be something from the Devil, or space. The blast and wail of a guitar is reminiscent of 'Iron Man' (Sabbath), forcing you into recognition that this is Segall's pride and joy of the year, his crowning glory after having to work on other people's ideas for however long. Yes, there are more garage-inspired, retro-fuzzy anthems and punk-driven, three-minute singles, but he's let go this time. He's put a surreal spell over it all, every piece of his mind's experimentation has gone into one big, fat piece of griminess, a superbly spontaneous sounding noise-fest.