v361 - Fleshies - "Scrape The Walls"

After three long years, we have you here a new album by FLESHIES, a loud band from beautiful Oakland, CA, who have released two loved-to-death-by-the-kids albums on Alternative Tentacles. After their second full-length The Sicilian and years of body/mind-warping worldwide tour marathon, FLESHIES withdrew into drummer Brian Hamiltron's Sugar Mountain Studios to work on a new opus. Breaking away from the punk rock tradition of banging out a record in a few days, they took their damned sweet time making the most ridiculous album possible. Scrape The Walls is a spirited 17-song effort to molest punk rock in a similar manner that SPARKS unwholesomely molested glitter rock, THE MELVINS mauled rock, or THE BUTTHOLE SURFERS maimed music in general. (Speaking of SPARKS, this album includes a delightful cover of "Happy Hunting Ground" with JELLO BIAFRA on guest vocals.) Scrape Th e Walls bounces everywhere from somewhat sunny-dispositioned pseudo anthems to sludgy, stoner rock-esque castings, all glazed with FLESHIES' inimitable sense of fuck-you humor. But honestly, no 200-word summary can neatly tie up the disorderly strands of ideas and musical chaos that is FLESHIES--and we wouldn't want to do them such disservice--so we will just say Scrape The Walls is exactly the kind of record AT should be releasing and leave it at that.  
I thought, 'Aha! ThIs is what punk rock was supposed to be. --JELLO BIAFRA