AluminumKnotEye- 'Trunk Lunker' LP PRESS

THE RISE AND THE FALL (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
This WI train wreck kicks out the noise at a frantic, mesmerizing pac. This record rules! Noise and wierd as fuck, just the way I like it. Where has this spazzcore band been hiding all of my life; than again where have I been? I would love to see AKE live. Dissonance, mass hysteria, chaotic are just a few workds to describe this righteous record. Keyboards to boot! This is a must buy! A definite barn burner!

UNDER THE VOLCANO (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
Wow! This is the trashiest Trash Rock band I’ve heard in a long time. With a production quality that rivals the Cheater Slicks and Halo of Flies, a guitarist who hits the right notes sometimes and a manic preacher-style vocalist a la Mike Hard from the God Bullies, AKE (as they’re known) make the perfect soundtrack for drinking, barn burning, drinking, cow-tipping and drinking. They hail from Wisconsin, the home of cannibal serial killer Ed Gein, the Tar Babies, Die Kreuzen and my favorite super-underground heroes, the Two Felipes. This album is for people who like sloppy, deranged Drunk n’ Roll. Glug glug. (LP)-chuck.foster

ROCTOBER(AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
Heavy caveman rock. If Cavemen got to go to artschool and study genius-ness!

ODYSSEY (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
When this baby rips open with "Final Fling of The Amputee," with its twitchy, punk-rock panic attack, and wild, snarling vocals, you know you've hit on something good. The best part is that's not even the high point "Cannibal Chew Cud" is quaking, shaking, distorted giant with off-kilter tempos that stomp about like a science fiction beast. "Squirmling" is a weird, decaying dance number that manages to make the organ sound futuristic. (My favorite track) "Is it My Body?" is a violent, garage blitz blasted from a wind tunnel. It's loaded with crap like this. I could go on about every song, but you'd probably get bored. It's out of hand to say the least. Imagine Chrome, Oblivians, Billy Childish and Crime combined with a vacuum cleaner on reverse and you're getting there.

NOW WAVE (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
How far can you take rock n' roll before it ceases to be rock n' roll, before it becomes something else entirely, something that lacks the indomitable spiritual fire that makes rock n' roll what it is? Countless attempts to "modernize" or "progress" or "evolve" the devil's music have either failed miserably or given birth to music that---while highly original and perhaps even exceptional---sure as hell doesn't rock. But a few bands have managed the feat, and AluminumKnotEye is the latest.

AKE topdog Keith Vercauteren has succeeded where so many others have failed. He's pushed rock n' roll music to the very edge of the cliff, upon which he hangs upside down by the toe he's nailed to the rock, his deranged laughter resonating like God's vengeful flatulence, his bloody-knuckled hand brandishing the machete he waves for the amusement of the on-lookers who stand safely behind the barbed-wire fence that ole' Keith already scaled with ease. Down below lie the rotting corpses of the failed envelope-pushers, their unlistenable, pretentiously discordant racket now just a distant memory in the minds of the fickle punkfans. As weird and original and downright fucked-up as it may be, the music of AKE is still rock n' roll, rooted as it is in primitive searing blues and the bizarro pre-punk of mid-'70s Cleveland. Trunk Lunker, the group's long, long, long-awaited debut full-length, makes most of today's art-punk/new wave/noise-thrash wannabes sound like the fourth tier posers they truly are.

I'm now going to commit the cardinal sin of rockwriting and state that the music of AKE rewards repeated listens. How lame of me! But seriously...
99 percent of the time, "rewards repeated listens" is just bullshit spewed forth by gutless hacks who don't really like a record but feel obligated to fall in line with the multitude of critics who swear it's the greatest thing since the invention of the pocket pussy. In the case of Trunk Lunker, though, it's the absolute truth. Listening to the album for the very first time, you may find yourself frightened or repulsed or hurting in the ear region. You may ask yourself such questions as "What is this shit?" or "Why is that man screaming as if his skin's being slowly peeled off?" But those of you who are adventurous listeners, those of you who don't sprint to the stop button at the first sign of cacophonous clamor or shudder at the mere thought of psychotic wailing, will discover a fierce, frantic brilliance beneath all the earsplitting feedback, disjointed guitar racket, and weird keyboard clanging. The album rocks, but it does far more than just that. It takes you to a strange, dark place: the realm of dementia that is the Wisconsinian sticks. The album plays like a lo-fi punk equivalent to the stories Flannery O' Connor, the disconcerting strangeness of Flan-O's mid 20th Century Deep South transplanted to the equally eerie modern Midwest. Suburbanite college boys with hipster haircuts could never have concocted noise like this; it oozes an authenticity that could have only come from a lifetime spent in the general vicinity of racetracks, hunting towers, porn shops, and scary rednecks. "The smells, sounds, mass-murderings and weirdo quirks of the rural Wisconsin landscape are all over this thing," writes Todd Trick Knee in the album's one-sheet text. Indeed!

Some highlights:

"Final Fling of the Amputee" kicks off like a backwoods blues barnburner but quickly warps into a spazzed-out, art-damaged train wreck, strange keyboard blips looming in the background like clock alarms for the subconscious. By the end of the song, Keith V. is laughing in the sort of way one would after seizing the severed head of a vanquished enemy.

"Scales In The Tub", a swampy blues-trash groover featuring the year's catchiest guitar riff, is the album's most "accessible" song. When he's not screeching and yelping like his balls are soaking in Icy Hot, Keith V. is a righteous howler in the primitive rock n' roll tradition. The brother's got soul, and on this track, he delivers an especially inspired performance.

The great "Squirmling" feels like a surreal vision of rural apocalypse, Keith intoning like a track announcer out of a William S. Burroughs novel, his muddled call drowning in an ocean of angular, vaguely surfy guitar and ominously hypnotic organ. When I imagine this particular racetrack, I envision aliens at the wheel, driving vehicles made of human organs, the bleachers coming alive and devouring spectators. Or something like that.

The haunting, abrasive "Country Trunk" might appeal to fans of early Joy Division. The surging, epic "Once Upon a Time in the Midwest" works the same motif but welds it to a spaghetti western film score.

The hellfire thrasher "Car Batteries and Baby Oil" is a flawless distillation of Stooges savagery and Screamers tumult. It kicks proverbial ass.

If asked to complete the sentence "You should check out AluminumKnotEye if you like _____", I'd probably reply with "hanging around the factory floor enjoying the sounds of the pulverizing machinery, hoping that maybe you'll get to hear the bloodcurdling screams of some poor sap who just got his toe crushed". Or maybe you just like original, weird punk rock of the Grade-A caliber. Either way, this album is well worth your money.

Sure, sure, sure: Trunk Lunker is not for everyone. But then again, what kind of crap is?

MAN WITHOUT SHAME (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
I actually used to write to AKE a few years back. They contacted me after reading an article I wrote on the scene in Milwaukee for Perfect Sound Forever, we wrote back and forth, they promised a cassette or two and then the correspondence dropped off. Such is life. They had/have a swell web site with a list of “influences” I took to meaning only one thing: a roving band of record collectors. Joe Carducci held the belief that such people should not form bands (or at least not be allowed on SST). He held a staunch policy that such parasitic creatures do not make worthy music. Despite my initial trepidation that AKE would be an audio garbage dump of obviously hip influences driven through a blender and spat out like a name-dropping mess, such fears were for naught. This is a really fine album. Imagine, if you will, a no-fi concoction which brings together the sounds of early Mike Rep and the Quotas, Vertical Slit, early Cramps, Crime, Chrome and the Screamers and you’ll be nearly hitting the region known as Aluminium Knot Eye. Better still, they never sound like they’re trying too hard. I didn’t think “they” made rock albums as good as this anymore, and I fear that their presence on the relatively low-profile Trickknee label means this will be passed on by far more people than it should. Had it gotten the In The Red stamp of approval (literally, that is: though I bet Mr. Hardy digs this, too), you’d be hearing way more about it. Maybe you’ll be hearing a lot more about this anyway. It really is a good ‘un.

PSYCHOTIC REACTIONS (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
The first time i heard this album i was very surprised with the first song on it, really good post punk with and angry screamy singer.. but i continue hearing the album a little more and yeah it isn't bad but it isn't my thing. Some very good songs and some just ok, i'm not very good to hear angular rythms again and again.. finally, i get boring. If you are a post punk maniac and an ultra-fan of the A-Frames (i like them) and In the Red post punk bands you will enjoy this LP. Raúl Problematic

AGONY SHORTHAND (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
Remember the U-MEN? That wholly unheralded 80s Seattle band held a ton of only-sometimes-realized promise, made up in parts by "there's a bug in my pants" vocals, spastic guitar freakouts, and layering of insane amounts of overmodulated noise over what was essentially a basic garage rock template. They presaged many of the post-hardcore Touch & Go acts, while allegedly inspiring some of the Northwest's better late-80s bands. Now they have a direct descendent, whom I reckon are even better. ALUMINUM KNOT EYE appear to have been kicking around Milwaukee for a good decade now, putting out cassettes and such, and now they've finally got a full-length. It's fantastic -- raw & weird panic rock that just about busts a nut on every chord. Singer also has that crazy hot-oil-just-fell-on-my-foot caterwauling vocal style, and when he's not drowned out by an acre of feedback, he's pretty damn entertaining.

Their art-punk riffs are very big and often very disjointed -- they even go so far as to tackle an ALICE COOPER number and pull it off most admirably. That number, "Is It My Body?" is currently in heavy rotation here, as are the opening 1-2 of "Final Fling of the Amputee" and "Scales In The Tub". You want to get a better sense of where they're coming from, just check out their links list. It's like a who's who of your favorite bands: Electric Eels, Stooges, Chrome, Screamers, Hasil Adkins, etc. I'll bet ALUMINUM KNOT EYE have been marinating in these wild-ass songs for many a year, waiting to unleash them upon us. That patience has paid off with a very fine debut. Dare I say it's artastic!

RAZORCAKE (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
What can make supreme weirdness so catchy? The process of discovery and invention is so vague and convoluted, but when you hear something from left field, it's either like being whacked by Thomas Edisons wet brain and a guge light goes on over your head or it's easy to dismiss it as broken ear junk (or just plain shit). For as cacophonic, scree-laced and scraped-into-a-mound-then-blasted-apart as AKE are, there's a soft bubblegum-ness that keeps it all together. Somehow. The beauty of it, what I hear may be completely different for the next listener. Christ, they've got stuff reminiscent of the Cramps to Roky Erikson to the Lost Sounds to the Pagans to the Clone Defects to the Scientists to Hasil Adkins to Masters Of The Obvious to spaghetti western soundtracks to good old fashioned gas huffing. Mix 'em up in a big jagged ball and imagine an accident with them getting splattered on a windshield with the little bits of glass everywhere. Definitely something challenging yet instantly listenable. Here's to rural Wisconsin and it's frozen tundra's of inspiration.

MRR(AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
Finally, ALUMINUM KNOT EYE?s Trunk Lunker is brought to you by both Trickknee Productions (CD) and Dead Beat Records (LP). I was first exposed to this band on a mix-tape made by Wisconsin hype-machine Todd Trickknee a few years back, and they stuck out like a sore thumb alongside much of the material that surrounded them. Flash forward a couple of years to this album, and AKE leaves me in the same stupor. This is some outlandishly great stuff that simply refuses to be pinned down into a specific genre. Aluminum Knot Eye is brutally uneasy listening, which, if you?re a reader, you know is something that immediately puts them on my good side. They have an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink sound, borrowing from the key punkish movements of years? past, focusing on the most adventurous (70s adventurous proto and mid-90s lo-fi bash, to name a few) and warping them to suit their own deranged needs. Trunk Lunker is a truly fantastic LP and my pick of the issue.
SMASHIN' TRANSISTORS (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
THERE IS LIFE ON MARS! It seems that no matter what frequency one switches the T.V. to on the angry red planet Aluminum Knot Eye is staring back out at them. "They've sold more than the Beatles, Eminem and Slim Whitman combined!" an announcer repeats reminds the higher beings even though it's something they already know. No one can pinpoint when the sensation started exactly but theorists believe it's rooted in the secret cultural exchange program that the United Nations had with the planet in the 70's and 80's. We sent them touring packages like Black Sabbath and Crime, Big Black and Alice Cooper and so on in exchange for cell phone technology, Thinsulate and microwave popcorn. Martians teens were allowed to take joyrides across our planet which usually involved cattle mutilations and crop circles as we turned a blind eye and we let them abduct people for probing and experimentation as long as they were hicks, kooks or malcontents cuz no one would believe them thus keeping proof of interplanetary lifeforms a conspiracy. AKE were observation subjects pulled out of a lit by a staggered strobe deserted Wisconsin shoreline that escaped from the spacecraft and found themselves lost in what was thought to be a strange land. The outerspace youth took to them instantly as the real deal. I've heard it explained as something akin to how the Japanese react to western culture, taking sometimes strange, sometimes specific parts and building their own version of it. BUT THIS GAVE THEM WHAT THEY WERE LACKING! Y'see bands that came through before were separated by force fields or bullet glass (another innovation we finagled out of 'em) and Aluminum Knot Eye are living breathing earthlings. One's they could touch even if it might get their claws bit off. Stuttery, raw nerved and living in the middle of some lunar valley subject to fiery meteor showers they'd rather swill some 8 dollars out the door case of beer and lacerate faces with a guitar sounds than sip latte's and discuss in hushed tones what "art-punk" means to them.

CRIMINAL IQ (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
Weird and wonderfully wild garage rock from these Wisconsin "lunkers". With songs that run the gammit from tripped out hard edge garage psyche to manic and disturbed knife weilding crazyness. great guitar work sounds like he's playing with the 3 fingers he has left from working the lumber yard. produced by monsier trickknee (a northern wisconsin pothead) who was also responsible for digging up the Catholic Boys and Mystery Girls. This one's a keeper.

SLEAZEGRINDER (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
As their name would suggest, AKE are a buncha tweaked motherfuckers. The name would not also suggest that they are from somewhere in Wisconsin, but they are, which only adds to the tweaked-ness. In fact, I almost just chucked this one, because their logo is a chick with a fish head, and their name is awful, and the record is called “Trunk Lunker”, and if I wanted experiments, I’d have bought a shoe box full of mice and a scalpel. But hey, they have an Alice Cooper cover, so I gave ‘em a spin, and luckily, their ‘experimentation’ is more asshole-endurance stuff than art. Like, “how ‘bout if I sing this one like Jim Morrison as a tin robot (“Squirmling”) or “What if we play “Is It My Body” like spazzy fuckin’ lunatics (Alice would dig this one, guaranteed), or “Why don’t you stab me in the balls while I scream for a minute and a half (“The Thing on the Doorstep”*). Under all the heaping helpings of ginchy weirdness is a fierce and possibly dangerous garage punk band in the battered vein of early Pussy Galore and those other cellar dwelling Wisconsin freaks, Sagger. Everyone around you will hate you while you listen to this (I have empirical evidence) but if yr in the mood for some NASTY rock n’ roll noise, then Trunk Lunker (ugh) is a good place to find some.

* bonus points for the gratuitous HP Lovecraft reference.

HORIZONTAL ACTION (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
AluminumKnotEye have been around, in one form or another, for about ten
years. They've always been odd, fucked-up, strange, nearly unclassifiable. They
don't really care about making friends. They can clear the room. They come from
small backwoods WI burgs with names like "Chilton" and "Manitowoc." They
sound like a queer mix between Chrome, the Residents, the Electric Eels, Devo, Big
Black, the Pagans and a myriad of other bygone weirdo/punk groups. They are
loud, abrasive, ugly. They are fucking great. They are occasionally a mechanical mess. They are sometimes unpredictable. They perform and have recorded songs with titles like "Final Fling of the Amputee" and "Cannibal Chew Cud." They sound like they mean it. They also perform and have recorded one of my current favorite songs: "Scales in the Tub," which, somehow, reminds me of a sci-fi themed CCR tune reworked by renegade robots. And they just released a CD that contains the aforementioned material and it's very good and you should buy it. (Eric Lastname)

TERMINAL BOREDEOM (AluminumKnotEye - 'Trunk Lunker' LP, Dead Beat)
After a low-key decade-long run, Wisconsin's AluminumKnotEye finally unleash an alb proper. These guys were making strange noise before strange noise was the current rave, before the nouveau indie bohemes copped the "art" schtick, before the last crop of garage punks dropped their Rip Off's covers and headed for discordant, angular horseshit that's as empty and worthless as it is fake. AKE are the real deal, and I love 'em for it. Think pieces of Chrome, the Residents, Big Black and Debris grafted onto the primitive r'n'r template birthed by the Pagans, the Electric Eels, early A. Cooper, etc., yet addled by the big-balls overdrive of early AmRep savagery and mangled by savage production. Keith's vox writhe and growl over the din as it explodes in short bursts and threatens to collapse, the barely-noticeable keys scraping weirdo patterns in the underbelly of it all the while. "Scales in the Tub" is tune of the year. Buy, or forever wallow in other stuff by other bands. Vinyl on Deadbeat forthcoming. (EL)