THE FEELERS - 'Lear To Hate The Feelers' LP/CD PRESS

PEACE DOG MAN (THE FEELERS- "Learn To Hate The Feelers" LP/CD, Dead Beat)
There just aren't enough bands these days that are seriously exploring the finer points of Benjamin Orr's wardrobe. Enter Ohio's THE FEELERS. The boys kick up a glorious bottle smashing CRAMPS-by-way-of-DEVO hootenanny, perfect for livening up your bridge game at the in-laws. With song titles like "Stuttgart Looking Motherfucker" and a drummer named Q.T. Thunderguns, one may be tempted to think that these guys are just about destroying private property and consuming illicit chemicals. And of course, it's completely true. But despite the wackiness, there's plenty of musical muscle-flexing, namely from bass player (wait for it...) Sean Sensation, who lights quite a fire under ditties like "The Rev" and the ultra-snappy "Slit Writz". The only thing that could ruin a blowout like this is eggheaded production. But don't worry, it only takes one listen to these unpolished howls, yowlz, and burbles to set all worries to rest. Throw your coat on the chair, park your brain on the adjoining table, grab somebody else's drink, and turn it up.

ROCTOBER (THE FEELERS- "Learn To Hate The Feelers" LP/CD, Dead Beat)
Damaged trash garage so scrambled and ugly that it made me want to fuck furniture. This is as gloriously stupid as Crime (the band) and crime (the leisure activity).

FUNGUS BOY (THE FEELERS- "Learn To Hate The Feelers" LP/CD, Dead Beat)
On the heels of a highly sought after debut seven inch these five lads from Columbus, OH have hit us upside the head with their first full length. This is a continuation of the single right down to the "recorded in the practice space" feel. They've been called everything from a Killed By Death style band to being "too lo-fi". Noisy, dirty, quick (only one song passes the two minute mark) songs that sound like the Clone Defects pissed on a Reatards album and this was the murky yellowish brown run off, but that's a good thing. The only hold over from the single is the song "Next Boy". Headache inducing, dual guitar rock with a hatred of Germans thrown in for good measure. I bet I could clear the break room at work with this, all the while I'd sit there by myself with a smile on my face. The vinyl has a song not on the CD.

ODYSSEY (THE FEELERS- "Learn To Hate The Feelers" LP/CD, Dead Beat)
I'm from Fargo and people here have never really been able to get over how godheadSilo and Hammerhead were located here at one time. Even though they're great bands, it's kind of weird how this fact is trumpeted from time to time more than a decade after the fact. Well, now everyone can ooh and ah over (ex-FargoMoorheadian) JG's latest band, which was never located here, but maybe you can see where I was going, there. Ummm... ok. Lots of people have already gone on and on about these guys (myself included) and it's totally deserved. "Learn To Hate" is a punk rock classic from the get go with loud, blurry-eyed, snotty delivery and a nervous, paranoid energy throughout. Get Out sounds like the musical equivalent of a rambling, nuclear-damaged lunatic. The guitar and bass in "Slit Wrists" sounds like the background music for some robot mine-field in some long lost NES game. Get the vinyl because it has an extra song and you need everything you can get by these guys.

THE RISE AND THE FALL (THE FEELERS- "Learn To Hate The Feelers" LP/CD, Dead Beat)
Buddy Holly and the Big Boppers justs woke up from their dead slumber, took some pills and are having a party in my head with a bunch of guitars and drums and things that are scarey. Yeah, it's a tasty delicious treat. Kinda like the sweets your mom would give you every time you made a pooey in your potty. Whatever, these guys are no pooey. They're pretty rockin' and I think you should treat yourself to a post poppy treat for the ears. Just make it in the poop box this time, and don't forget to wipe your ass.

NOW WAVE (THE FEELERS- "Learn To Hate The Feelers" LP/CD, Dead Beat)
A killer KBD style blitzkrieg courtesy of Columbus's finest!

I have this recurring dream where I find myself trapped in a room with no doors or windows. Panic-stricken and crazed, I re-check the room 25 times, desperately searching for some hidden exit. But none is to be found, and all I'm left to do is repeatedly bang my head against the wall, doing so in hopes that I'll be able to break through or die trying, sparing myself a slow, agonizing death.

The Feelers' debut album sounds the way this dream feels.

Rich Kroneiss recently came up with the PERFECT description of Killed By Death style punk, saying, "I like my records to sound like they were recorded on tape sometime in 1981 by a bunch of kids playing what they figured to be punk." That hits the nail on the head. While some amongst the new KBD breed may be sitting in their basements slavishly imitating their fave bits of yesteryear's loud-and-fast noise, the best of the lot don't sound like they're imitating anyone. They're just lettin' it rip, creating their own noise that may or may not conform to some established definition of "punk rock". Columbus, Ohio's Feelers are widely regarded to be one of the very best bands of this new breed, and Learn To Hate The Feelers will do nothing but boost the group's standing amongst zine writers and KBD junkies.

Bursting from a hailstorm of radio static comes "Peasants and Lepers", an auditory experience somewhere in between early Devo and a Novocain-less teeth drilling. From there, the album continues to beat a bloody hammer upon your nerves and eardrums, each song slashing and gnawing away at your stereo speakers, heavy throbbing bass piercing the air like knife stabs to the stomach, abrasive guitars and fractured rhythms blaring above the demented howling of Prof. Dan Feelings, who sounds like the psychopathic spawn of Lux Interior and David Yow's mom. The whole 13-song onslaught is over in twentysome minutes.

It takes a certain kind of genius to make listenable music out of an attack as atonal as The Feelers', and that's exactly what the band manages to do. Learn To Hate The Feelers is punishing and anxiety-inducing, and upon first listen may strike one as an earache waiting to happen. Yet there's something incredibly compelling about this album, something that draws me in like a car wreck on the highway. This is not off-the-cuff aural chaos; it's brilliantly conceived noise that hits the mark and burns a hole right through it. One can pick up small pieces of familiar racket amidst the sonic thrashing: swampy blues, nihilistic Germs-y punk, seminal Ohioan new wave, echoes of prehistoric Killed By Death obscurities. Yet all in all, the whole ferocious mess comes out sounding like The Feelers and only The Feelers.

I always like a punk rock record that can take me to another place---even if it's a place of excruciating terror and unmentionable horrors. Listening to The Feelers, I envision clowns in bloody rags shooting up on the street, albinos dressed in SS uniforms marching towards my door armed with castration wrenches, 12-year-old pregnant girls in gas masks studying the polluted sky while their convict boyfriends shoot house cats for fun. As primitive as it may be, there's something about this band's sound that feels ultra-modern, or at least reflective of the anxious, pill-popping age we now live in. I'm not exactly sure what a "Feeler" is, but I kind of imagine it to be a sinister alien device that probes the brains of unsuspecting Earthlings, leaving them unharmed but slightly disturbed.

Bonus points are due for the best song title of the year, "Stuttgart (Looking) Motherfucker".

IPUNKROCK.NET (THE FEELERS- "Learn To Hate The Feelers" LP/CD, Dead Beat)
Sin duda uno de los discos del 2005 el debut de estos fieras de Columbus (USA) en LP, ya que anteriormente habí­an publicado un single "Fuhre New Miniskirt" autoeditado en su propio sello Death By Noise y del que tan solo vieron la luz 300 copias que volaron enseguida gracias a las buenas crí­ticas recibidas y a los fans que ha ido consiguiendo la banda; este single ha sido reeditado por el sello de Memphis Contaminated Records.

En este "Learn To Hate The Feelers" fliparás con los 14 temazos altamente adictivos, en los que se encuentran muy presente la sombra de los Reatards, y no es de extrañar ya que en las filas de esta banda está Sean Sensation bajista de los Reatards.

Sucios, directos, rápidos, los adorarás si te gustan los Oblivians, Daylight Lovers, Catholic Boys, Kajun SS, Tokyo Electron, Stitches, Functional Blackouts, Registrators.

Compra o muere!!!

DEEP FRY BONANZA (THE FEELERS- "Learn To Hate The Feelers" LP/CD, Dead Beat)
Knowing they bash out 15 songs in just a hair under 22 minutes, one would think that Dead Beat Records has finally released their first hardcore platter, but such is not the case; nope, the Feelers are just a raw, minimalistic garage punk band short on complex song structures and long on aggression and power.

In fact, the fifteen songs here blow by so quickly that I keep wanting to check my CD player to see if it's functioning every time the record ends; I keep thinking to myself there's no way this record is that short. While that certainly says something about the actual length of the album, it also says something about the Feelers' songwriting; not many bands could keep up this type of pace even for 20 minutes.

The only thing that may rub some people the wrong way is the production, which is beyond retro. I'm not sure if the Feelers were going for a Killed by Death punk type of thing or a lo-fi 60s vibe, but Learn to Hate the Feelers sounds very muted and claustrophobic, almost like it's recorded in mono. It's a production style so distinctive you have to either love it or hate it; if it's the former it'll be because it's so raw, if it's the latter it's because recordings like this can sometimes come off as a little contrived when garage bands can sound like they were recorded in a 48-track studio for just a couple hundred bucks.

If you keep up with Dead Beat's regular offerings of poppy garage punk, this is no doubt another one you'll want to add to your collection, as the Feelers are right up their with all of Dead Beat's other great bands. If you aren't a fan of Dead Beat, get over to their web site and check them out, because there are very few labels out there who are this consistent.

TERMINAL BOREDOM (THE FEELERS- "Learn To Hate The Feelers" LP/CD, Dead Beat)
Some are already decrying the recent retro-KBD movement happening as a negative trend, but I personally have no problem with it. I like my records to sound like they were recorded on tape sometime in 1981 by a bunch of kids playing what they figured to be punk rock. It makes for some fast and frantic action, and when it comes to dishing out this variety of shinola, the Feelers are the jerks to do it. Moving quickly to the head of the class after planting their buzzsaw debut single directly between our eyes, these Midwesten 'mos are certainly deserving of any ear-time you throw their way. Fourteen songs worth of high-anxiety furor (fuhrer?) that kind of pick up the ball the Clone Defects dropped musically after their early singles, and crammed with copious amounts of full-throttle snot-bringing. Put this one on your "to do" list. (RK)

TERMINAL BOREDOM (THE FEELERS- "Learn To Hate The Feelers" LP/CD, Dead Beat)
If you knew someone out of the loop who asked what was up with Midwest neuvo-sorta-artpunk, this is as good a place to start as any. From the snippet in/outros and design fonts (Catholic Boys) to the TOTALKBDMAN falling-downisms (Functional Blackouts) and broken rhythms (Human Eye/Aluminum Knot Eye), this is some bent and powerful shit that stings the nose like a paper mill. For some reason, it's not what I expected, but just as good as I thought it would be. There are also jaunts into Reatards territory (makes sense). Fave songs so far are "Get Out" and "Peasants and Lepers," but there's not a bad tune on here. Perfect soundtrack to your next Fecalware Party. (TK)