- Melbourne’s potted history of punk are back for a second go, shoving all that gloriously messy, ballsy and loud heritage on to another record. Well there should be enough for at least two.
The trio of Matt ‘Penky’ Penkethman, Nathan Williams, and Isaac Ishadi have a history in truly heavy hardcore bands like Soma Coma and Kromosom, but one afternoon while getting wrecked at the pub they also got busy reminiscing about Lobby Loyde and his band Coloured Balls. Loyde, an Aussie pioneer, is famous for taking psych rock and experimenting with just how hard you can make it. His legacy is, as you might guess, a founding influence for Power.
As such, Power’s schtick is similar but different. Fondly remembering a huge chunk of the early history of heavy music, they throw proto-punk, first-wave punk and first-wave metal in with a psychobilly, boogie spray-job and fragments of second-wave US punk if you dig about to find them.
As great slurries of noise go the band’s first LP Electric Glitter Boogie was well informed on its music history and that’s just the sort of thing to get professional music-fanciers in a froth. I’m guessing the fact that Power put pretty much zero effort into promoting their music just sealed the deal for publications like Pitchfork and Noisey who descended like ravenous vultures and devoured that debut LP.
Come the second, Turned On and the complete lack of PR from Power or their label Cool Death seems to have had a more predictable effect: the international hype train doesn’t appear to have left the station. That’s a shame, because the new record is certainly a worthy follow-up.
At the very least the production, while not hi-fi (thank goodness) is a great leap forward, adding just the right amount of clarity to the noisy mess. Beyond that, the band spent a lot of their time in their little press release talking a lot about how much they like Motörhead at the moment, although once again that influence seems to be just one of many crawling one over another in there. To be honest, the things I hear the most are that old proto-punk rhythm section doing it’s best to avoid being pulled completely to pieces by the anarchic qualities of first-wave punk. Power are a band that can make that kind of tension work like crazy. It’s worth noting that the single released in advance, Turned On Boogie is quite unrepresentative of the rest record, but in a pretty pleasing way. The repetitive boogie spins round ever faster and however punk it might be, that simple, powerfully motorik beat is equally kraut. It’s also, to my mind, the most faithful tribute Power have done to Coloured Balls to date, which is nice.
Whatever overriding influences inform Turned On there are certainly a lot of them and music aficionados should have a right old time teasing them apart. Or you could just thrash about like a fibrillating corpse till you’ve had your fill. This record is good, whichever way you want to take it, Power have delivered again.
- Chris Cobcroft.