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Shit and Shine, "Kuss Mich, Meine Liebe"
Given that the band has maintained a staunchly absurdist and secretive presence online, matched with the typically useless but nonetheless entertaining blurb on the Load Records website, it's hard to know anything about these guys other than a: they obviously have a sense of humor and b: they also love loud noisy rhythms.
The opening track is, unfortunately, the album's greatest misstep, which almost caused me to write it off entirely as not worth my time. Admittedly a great title, "Biggest Cock in Christendom" unfortunately chugs along for nearly 16 minutes on the same drum loop run through various filters and distortions. While it could be interesting, for that length it is more of an endurance test than anything else. Perhaps that was their intent, who knows.
The remainder fares much better, I am happy to say. "The Germans Call it a Swimming Head" follows the same blueprint as the opener, but with a greater amount of variety and a sub-five minute duration it works much better. "The Side of the Road" also relies on a drum machine run through a bank of effects, but with some additional noises here and there and some buried, muffled vocals to add more variety.
The two other epic length tracks on here, "Toilet Door Tits" and "Preventions Arise" also manage to completely go in different directions than the opener and are all the better for it. The former also features drums overdriven to the point of becoming just a wall of noise in addition to odd electronic whistles and whirrs, raging vocals deep in the mix, and what even resembles a guitar in the mix. Unlike "Biggest Cock…" the structure and mix changes throughout, so the 14 minute duration is perfectly acceptable. "Preventions Arise" is a more restrained piece built around deep, bass heavy percussion, odd noises here and there, and oddly enough a quiet, but audible spoken word narrative.
Obviously the boys of Shit and Shine like metal too, and it shows up on "Taking Robe Off" and "Mr. and Mrs. Gingerbread Hawaii," both being appropriately muffled cluster bombs of distorted grindcore thrash. Sort of like a neighbor a few doors down blasting Napalm Death's Scum and not having the common courtesy to invite other people over to enjoy it. The title track is a slower paced piece of near conventional metal that closes out the album, but with just as much fuzz and grime as the preceding tracks.
This is definitely a fun album to listen to, but it is unfortunately easy to just consider Shit and Shine another 'Load band' because they do walk a similar path that bands like Lightening Bolt and The USA is a Monster do. It's entertaining, but not groundbreaking or overly unique, and it doesn't really need to be.
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