Artist: Totally Wrecked

Artist: Totally Wrecked

Links: https://www.facebook.com/totallywreckedmusic

http://totallywrecked.bandcamp.com/

Devolved from the music of the Spaceshits, Totally Wrecked is garage rock incarnate who last year released the four-volume series of EPs, Garbage Tapes. Unlike that defunct Canadian act, who at least had bass, backing vocals, claps and hand-percussion, Totally Wrecked is a duo featuring only guitar and drum. So the difference between the bands is roughly the same as that separating Mike Patton's Mr. Bungle and Tomahawk projects -- namely, The Spaceshits and Mr. Bungle are interesting but innocuous, and Tomahawk is dense and dangerous.

Of 17 songs spread across EPs with names like Damaged Gods, Blue Vomit, Trunk Dank and Wasteoidz, the drummer bashes it out to swells of distortion with a vocal howl that's visceral. The lyrics are mostly indecipherable; so I'll simply say it's hard for even great bands to relate or be memorable without words. Leonard Cohen, world famous for a song called "Hallelujah," is the same man who slayed us with the lines "give me crack / anal sex / take the only tree that's left / stuff it up the hole in your culture" and "destroy another fetus now / we don't like babies anyhow." Even those lyrics would endear us further to the garage gods that are Totally Wrecked.

TW manages to write as well as whatever garage band the indie press is sucking off at the moment, and they present it cloaked in the marketing anarchy favored by Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All -- their faces are either wrapped in the American flag or covered by a rubber skull mask, which looks ominous atop a Mexican poncho (same effect as skeleton mask/Hawaiian shirt in Oliver Stone's Savages); and their album art features candid nudity with the high-fashion aesthetic favored by Terry Richardson.

We get some nice riffs on Damaged Gods' "Skunk Beach," Wasteoidz's "Play Dumb" and Blue Vomit's "Blackhawk." Standout bands of the subgenre always feature a vocalist who strangles the best out of his vocal effects, and Totally Wrecked is no different. The vocalist makes effects his bitch on songs like Blue Vomit's "War Cry," which is screaming garage-blues music that will have you ditching the Black Keys and its many knockoffs.

Totally Wrecked's Bandcamp page states that they're "officially done with punk music." God I hope not.

*** The author of this review, Nathan Ellis, plays the talking drum for the following band: http://youtu.be/tMS73-1kCr8