Saturday, 29 June 2019

Lesbian Wallet - Date Animals (Album Review)


Release date: June 9th 2019. Label: Self Released. Format: DD

Date Animals – Tracklisting

1.Date Animals 03:19
2.Stones for Teeth 04:07
3.Names and Faces 02:06
4.Margherita Hack 07:31
5.Mugshot 04:40
6.1947, Plea (Golden Worms pt.I) 03:29
7.Invocación (Golden Worms pt.II) 03:10
8.2082, Kings (Golden Worms pt.III) 04:32

Members

Guitar & Vocals/Lyrics: Francesco Bordoni
Bass: Francesco Mastellone
Drums: Simone Romagnoli

Additional personnel:
Guitar solo on track 5: Simone Giacomucci (Il Gigante)
Synths on track(s) 5, 6, 8: Davide Costarelli
Inspiration on track(s) 1–8: Arnold S.

Review

Well this must be the weirdest album I’ve heard this year. Date Animals is the new album from Italian Punk/Sludge/Stoner Metallers – Lesbian Wallet. These guys are very hard to describe with the band drawing influences from The Melvins, High On Fire, Mastodon, QOTSA and The Jesus Lizard.

Everything about this album doesn’t make sense. It’s noisy, raucous, angry, loud and messy as hell. However, it’s also extremely addictive and contains some furious heavy riffs that Sludge/Stoner Metal fans will embrace with violent glee. I think only Lesbian Wallet themselves fully understand what is going on behind the frantic guitar sounds and maybe that’s the whole point with Date Animals.

The album is quite uncompromising in places with it’s insane lyrics and vocal delivery from Francesco. Lesbian Wallet won’t be for everyone and even I struggled with the album at first. However, the band won me round eventually and that’s mainly down to the epic riffs Lesbian Wallet play throughout the album.

Date Animals fully comes alive when Lesbian Wallet decide to play conventional Sludge/Stoner Metal riffs against the Punk Rock/Noise Rock carnage that holds everything together. The whole feel of the album has quite a LO-FI and EXPERIMENTAL sound from the start. So it’s not the best produced album. However, it’s so LOUD and the whole thing leaves you wanting more.

My favourite songs on the album are: Date Animals, Stone For Teeth, Names and Faces, Mugshot and the brilliant Golden Worms trilogy of songs.

As I stated before, this album won’t be for everyone. However, if you’re looking for something different from the Sludge/Stoner Metal world and a band that’s not afraid to play by the rules then LESBIAN WALLET are the band for you.

Take your time listening to this album as you’ll be surprised at how good this album actually is. Even if it is a FUCKED UP and NIGHTMARISH take on everything Sludge/Stoner Metal.

Words by Steve Howe

Links:

Facebook | BandCamp