Attempted Martyr

Dearborn, Michigan-based band Prostitute use their debut album Attempted Martyr as a facsimile of warfare. The band almost never comes up for air across the course of the eight-song record, going at full force for the entirety of the record and only occasionally dropping the velocity. This full-blast approach is fairly standard for hardcore and noise rock outfits with two-minute songs, but Prostitute slow boils their intensity, often stretching their songs into six minute run times where the energy never lets up. This can take the form of pounding, unrelenting percussion and seething vocals on opening track "All Hail," and this same show of force simmers into hypnotic fields of distortion and sickly grooves on tracks like "M. Dada" and the abrasive "Body Meat." Prostitute carries on the spirit of a long line of unhinged, high-potency bands, with vocalist Moe Kazra sometimes sounding like the next step in de-evolution from the Falls Mark E. Smith to Protomartyrs Joe Casey, and sometimes is just as beautifully unintelligible as the Jesus Lizards David Yow. The walls of noise on tracks like "Senegal" move beyond just booming drums and guitars, with electronic sounds buried in the background adding elements of danger and mystery to the already overpowering instrumentals. "In the Corner Dunce" is more of a post-punk track, with a dissonance akin to Sonic Youth and a slightly less assaultive approach, but its not long before the band kicks back into chaos and catchiness on "Joumana Kayrouz." Among Prostitutes deranged sonic heaviness are lyrical decryings of war, inspired in particular by Israels attacks on Lebanon. Attempted Martyr is a brilliantly brutal debut, one that leaves listeners nearly exhausted when it ends, only because of its non-stop outpouring of magnificent noise. ~ Fred Thomas