Austro-Hungarian Assassins announce new album

What remains of the bodies of what remains of the surviving members of Austro-Hungarian Assassins have announced that they have recorded a new album.

The band say the record, Inoperable, was recorded in lockdown and is a comment on the current state of the world. They have also stated that the ghost of former member Gobshite, who was killed by bin men some time ago, was not involved in the making of the album. According to the band’s official website the album will be released in a bit. 

The tracklisting has been confirmed, and is printed in full below:

1. Headless Christ      

2. Blindness is the new hearing 

3. They don’t speak for me

4. Warships patrolling the shores of Hell

5. DogShitBreath

6. Dead from the cock up

7. Fuckwit versus Fuckwit

8. The Broadhurst melody of 2020

9. The opposite of miracles 

10. Trading lives for votes 

11. Celebrity dickheads 

The album will not be preceded by a single anytime soon, and will be released on LP, cassette, 8-track cartridge, sound bullet and digicul download by Experience Logic records. 

Review: The Horse and Flipchart 40th anniversary festival

 

26th-27th May 2012. Tickets from £2 (carton of calypso orange and packet of cheese and onion crisps included in ticket price)

 

 

 

To some that original festival of forty years ago may seem just a crazy, drug-fug of a dream, preserved only in the browning photographs that adorn the walls of the toilets at the Horse and Flipchart. The images of such bands as the Oscillating Strawberry Deckchairs, Captain Alain's Bourbon Distillery and Slut eyeing one up as you take a slash seem like time-slides from a lost generation. But that's for the people who were there at the time. The rest can have no idea. Today's current band of hipsters and geezers that take their alcohol and exercise their mouths here can only imagine what it was like that barmy weekend in 1972 when almost a hundred people descended on the place and for just forty-eight hours the Horse and Flipchart seemed as if it was the true centre of the universe. And now, despite the wanton destruction and deaths that marred the 10th, 20th and 30th anniversary celebrations, comes this, the Horse and Flipchart 40th anniversary festival.

Album Review: Imploding Austro-Hungarian Assassins: The Semtex Bible

Hello there pop pickers. After coasting along for three albums of quite nauseating drive-time rock piffle Imploding Austro-Hungarian Assassins have returned to the generation-defining brilliance of 1998's debut album 'Funeral Flowers'. But why the sudden return to form? 

Well: the band have followed in the sneakersteps of Manic Street Preachers, Revolving Heads and the Bay City Rollers in melding onto new music lyrics by a long-lost genius. In the case of Imploding Austro-Hungarian Assassins that genius is Gobshite. The key lyricist of 'Funeral Flowers', Gobshite was the Assassins's throbbing spleen. Known for playing an unplugged stringless guitar on stage, as well as carving 'I really am quite serious about all this'  into a marrow and hurling it at a sheep, he died in 2001 after being in a coma for two years following an accident in which he was knocked over by some bin men.  

But before his death Gobshite wrote thousands of words on the walls of a toilet cubicle in the Cabbage and Volvo, the pub he owned with former footballer Lee Sharpe. So, why use Gobshite's words now? Gordon Lee Pardon?, the Assassins's singer/guitarist takes up the story:

"We thought of turning the cubicle into an art instillation, with a waxwork model of Gobshite taking a dump on the john. But after Keeky Delbrannon from Homosexual Dog saw the words he told us they were so vital that if we didn't use them they would. And I wasn't having that because I can't stand those fuckers".

Imploding Austro-Hungarian Assassins haven't let down the memory of Gobshite. There was an enormous amount of goodwill spat at the band when I saw them debut this material at the Horse and Flipchart in early February and I was joined in my appreciation at the gig by the likes of trendsetters Jon Ronson, Ed Balls, Fox Tavern, Douglas Sirk and MC Toaster. And if anything the album sounds even better. I heard the record for the first time on my friend Ingrid Smooth's mp3 handbag, on mushrooms, in a McDonald's drive-thru car park. So let's take a closer look:

1. Shattering the Illusion of Democracy

You'll know this one as the band's unsuccessful Eurovision entry. Features the lyric 'and the water we are feeding you/will make you vomit blood'. Sounds like Bill Hicks fronting Erasure. A good start to the album, nothing more.

2. Picasso on Masterchef

The album really moves up a gear with this. Sounds like the banging sound inside Karen Matthews's head, with Gordon Lee Pardon? chanting 'that sick pet duck of mine/ is weeping fizzy Vimto' over and over.

3. Negotiating with Terrorists

Includes the lyrics 'me and DLT are out on the pull again' and namechecks Donald Sindon, Diana Quick and Bud Dwyer.

4. Censor the Truth

To a pulsating Slovakian Disco beat the lyrics accuse certain members of the British Royal Family of murder. Best not to get into that here.

5. The Semtex Bible

The title track features guest vocalist Joe Longthorne. The best track on the album. A 'Seasons in the Sun' for the fucked-up.

6. 11th Hour Policy Reversal

I've not heard this one. Ingrid forgot to sync it onto her mp3 handbag. 

7. Pro-Celebrity Tragedy

An imagined eulogy at an un-named celebrity's funeral, to a tune not unlike Jolene by Dolly Parton. 

8. Christine Chubbock's War On Complacency

The new single. Features a sample of Serge Gainsbourg telling Whitney Houston he wants to fuck her on a 1980's French chat show.

9. Me and the Hangman

This sounds like Wire wrestling with the ghost of Dean Martin, if you can imagine such a thing.

10. The Socially Conscious Marching Band

This sees rhythm section Freaky Tom and Brian Handgrenade to the fore, and they rustle up a funkstorm. As good as ringing in sick and watching every episode of 'Man About the House' on DVD. 

11. I Am the Devil's Avocado

A live version of the Cool Mint classic, from 1999, featuring Gobshite on vocals. Recorded at a Sunday School in St. Helens.

A version of this review was included on a previous version of this blog.

Album Review: Homosexual Dog: The Pope's Tattoos

A lot's happened in the music world, as well as the actual world, since Homosexual Dog regaled us with their previous long-player, 2003's 'I Turned Into An Owl'. But none of it's been worth reporting, so I shan't be going into them here. 

But, thank Christ, we can forget about those last, lost eight years because Homosexual Dog have returned to slap us out of our slack-jawed torpor. But, I hear you cry, can they possibly live up to this unrealistic expectation? Well the answer to that is: yes, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, what, why, no, oh, look, perhaps, shush. I have also taken a closer look at the record. I stood with the record while standing on the shoulders of my close friend Ingrid Smooth under a naked, swinging light bulb. Added to the fact that I have also listened to the record in full, at a moderate-to-low volume, I felt I was in quite the position to review the album track by track by track by track by track by track.

Which is what I've done...

Side One

 

1. Man In Tall Hat Smiles 

Based on the 1903 film of the same name by cinema pioneer Alan 'T-Bone' Horsewind, this opens the album in suitably grand fashion. Like a psych-prog Brother Beyond. Nice.

2. Passing Time In 21st Century Austria

A low-key banjo opens the track before all hell breaks loose and singer Keeky Delbrannon intones the cryptic lyric 'I had you in the filing cabinet/I posted your letter/I made your sick pet duck smile' 563 times. Troubling.

3. The Pope's Tatoos

The title track features the first of the album's guest vocalists. A return to Joe Longthorne's edgier work. Unlistenable.

4. The Man Who Stole Kennedy's Brain

Who could forget hearing this song during the Dogs's comeback gig at the Horse and Flipchart earlier this year? Certainly not this writer, who cried like a bastard during the 26-minute wind sound effect coda, mercifully halved on record. Features a recording of Ian Woodyatt ringing for a pizza. Danceable. 

5. Jūs arklys žiūri į mane įtartinai

Performed with the Lithuanian skiffle group The Ha! Best described as interesting. Interesting.

6. Banging On About Foreign Holidays
A minute and half of pure punk hostility. This is apparently the song on which singer Keeky Delbrannon screamed so loud his voice fell out.

Side Two 

1. Lunar Regalia
The Dogs have often flirted with prog rock in the past but here they fully embrace the genre with this stunning 24-minute piece. Coming on like a cross between Pink Floyd, King Crimson and the Blather Blather Blather Blather Blather Blather Blather Blather Band, Lunar Regalia is a paean to post-millennium angst, some eleven years after the event. This needs to be listened to to fully appreciate the granduer and brilliance at work here. Any attempt to explain it in print would be a folly. And in any case, I can't be bothered.

2. Opening Up Your Defences
The album closes with this two minute instrumental track. Featuring guest vocals from Kate Humble.

A version of this review appeared on an earlier version of this blog.