El Schlong - Time/Place (Independent)
The world of music is festooned with ridiculous band names - Half Man, Half Biscuit, anyone? - and we are all guilty of making snap judgements based on the moniker that a musical collective carries. In the case of El Schlong, you'd be forgiven for expecting some kind of pop punk japery in the vein of Reel Big Fish or Alien Ant Farm. But by the horns of Ronnie James Dio you'd be wrong.
Time/Place is the second album in El Schlong's a less than profilic eight-year career and follows on from The Baddies Are Coming in 2008. A seven-track, independently released album, Time/Place is a complicated hybrid of mathcore, punk and progressive metal. Imagine Coalesce and Opeth having a cage fight, the commentary for which is provided by Candace Kucsulain from Walls of Jericho and you'd be getting close.
Despite only having three members (Leah Hinton on vocals/guitar, Nick Baldwin on bass/vocals and Jordan Tredray on drums/also vocals) El Schlong sound significantly bigger. There's a raw authenticity about their sound that many signed bands spend so much time and effort unsuccesfully trying to reproduce. Opening track With Trousers On feels like a pretty run of the mill metal chugger that suddenly descends into clean vocals, clean guitar, and all round calming ambience. Obviously this doesn't last and the mellow vibe is soon joined by a slice of distortion and double kick mayhem.
The most endearing quality of Time/Place is you don't know what direction El Schlong will take next. There's the thoroughly chilled 2.5 Dalis, which blends into the thrashing-yet-trumpet-laden Number 42, followed by the epic album closer Moving On, and this lack of predictablity makes it a thoroughly engaging listen.
El Schlong are a fantastically insane band. Despite the name and tongue-in-cheek song titles these are genuinely well constructed songs that, despite varying wildly throughout Time/Place, gel together perfectly. I would strongly recommend fans of the obscure investigate further.
Time/Place is available from Bandcamp here: http://elschlong.bandcamp.com/
