Review of 'Please, Just Hug My Feet', the debut album by Plenty of Death

There have been several well-documented cases of music critics taking against a group because of something they’ve said or done: Marty Willp dismissing Remembered Eric because of their tarmac drum kit, ‘Blue’ Julian Joos publicly humiliating The Spits as a result of their support of the ban on bread and that time when all four members of Big Bendy Frank were murdered onstage with a ham by The Guardian’s Mick Flat. The relationship between the critic and the artist has always been a little unruly, our criticisms of emerging musicians treated like hurling a whole iron at a terrapin or a bat. So it is with some degree of trepidation (47°, perhaps) that I approach this review of Plenty of Death’s first album Please, Just Hug My Feet. Plenty of Death are not well-known for taking criticism well, once famously throwing a small dart at the grandfather of a man they knew to have sneered at them. So I shall tread carefully, lest the glass crunching under my clog-shod feet should awaken the slumbering bear-hound and scupper my chance of owning hands and arms for much longer.

On first listen, P,JHMF sounds very much like any other grind-punk record of its genre, combining a love for hitting a guitar against a collection of teeth in a mouth with an almost willful disregard for the structural integrity of the aforementioned guitar and teeth. Think Filthy Muffin. Think Mug of Night. Think The Satan Magnet. Then think again. Because here is a collection of songs (‘album’) that holds up to a second listening, in much the same way that you might shower again to wash off the final ground-in remains of last night’s paintballing frenzy. On first appearance, the album’s third song Let My Blood Seep In is a fairly standard, fluffy fuzz of a lovesong, the auditory equivalent of wiping ice off a windshield with an ungloved hand. But listening again, the resonance of lyrics like ‘Our hearts in one sink will combine/And our two bloods taste actually really fine’ stay with you, echoing, reverberating, bouncing around your head-mind and clawing at your socks. The same goes for the entirety of the second disc, an extended ‘freak-in’ that throws melody against brevity and produces: ‘brelody’.

We have waited more than 34 years for this debut album from these gents, the masters of macabre, the senseis of senselessness, the vicars of vermin. And with rumours surfacing recently that Vic Wasp, the lead singer/wordsmith, may well be the missing psychopath the Zodiac Killer, we may have to wait 34 years more. Until then, make Please, Just Hug My Feet your album of the week.

You’ll like this if you like:

• Dawn Over The Somme, by BrainDread

• Carton o’ Blood, by Crucifixated

• There’s Only One Way To Find Out, by Nan and Granddad

#music #review