With a song in my heart and four espressos superheating my brain, it was once more into the lo-fi abyss of the cassette with Canada’s Hag Face keeping me company which, as time progressed, proved to be more disturbing than my last psychotic episode.
This cassette is a reissue of the band’s first two rough and ready EPs cut with baby powder and diluted with acetic acid. Blink, or think you blinked, and you’ll miss the nearly but not quite garage meet surf rock of the first EP for, distant and aggressively unfocussed as a band like this can be, you will have heard songs like “Teenage Monster” and “You Suck” before. The promise is as obvious as reverb and Clairol Nice ‘N’ Easy Blonde can make it but it prepares you not one bit for what is to come.
With a peal of thunder and surely as a result of some deal with the Devil where the Devil lost his shoes, the contents of the second EP takes off in a homicidal, and yet addictive, rage attacking anything within range. Crumble therefore before the hormone crazed “Bendy Wendy” and laugh maniacally as all those macho Swedish death metal bands, replete with neat beards, leather trousers and twigs, run from the girl powered twisted fury of “Dirtbag Dreamboat” and the sheer malevolence of “Slut Shame”.
Is this cassette a feminist statement? A battle anthem? Or just cognitive dissonance converted into song. I know not and I shall not ask for Hag Face have swords and they clearly like using them.
The cassette is a limited edition of 50 and is released on CHUD records.