Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath meets Sonic Youth at their most atonal; John Spencer Blues Explosion on steroids; the illegitimate offspring of The Birthday Party and Swans. These are big names to throw around, and heavy too, but all are apt descriptions for Foresterr’s war torn sound.
The melding of blues with the more noisy aspects of the dark side of rock n’ roll has been attempted in the past and with much success, by the likes of Captain Beefheart and his avant-garde take on the roots of American music, but there’s simply never been a noise quite like Foresterr. It’s an apt name for a band whose sound would slice clean through the thickest oak trunk.
If Robert Plant was a Black Flag fan he’d have a voice like Danny Meigal and if Greg Ginn played in Black Sabbath he’d play like Danny too. With a rhythm section as tight as the Sex Pistols and a propensity to make a noise twice as offensive, ‘The Town Dies Screaming’ is a record of extreme vitality. By combining the disparate elements of blues-rock and noise, Foresterr have created an original and, above all, exciting album.
Excitement is something that has been missing from rock for a very long time; in an age where blandness and conformity are celebrated, it’s refreshing to hear three guys from Long Island making such an unholy racket. Opening track ‘Smut’ sounds genuinely smutty, like sordid affairs in back-alley clubs, yet at the other end of the record, ‘Moonwalker’s psychedelic outro is mind-warping skronk at its best.
The 21st century is rife with pseudo-alternative, fame-hungry and impatient bands, seeking to exploit the angst of a mid-teen market for monetary gain, but ‘The Town Dies Screaming’ is as far from that as you can get. Foresterr are part of the handful of bands operating in isolation across our humble blue-green planet and come the day these bands’ influence coalesces into one group, we’ll have a rock n’ roll story to rival Nirvana’s. We live in hope.
JAMES FLEMING