Fungus II

One of the first rules of rock & roll is: you need a good drummer. The whole charmingly inept thing may work for a singer or guitarist, but if the drummer can't keep it together, the center will not hold and we all know how that plays out. So if one-man garage punk industry (not a bad drummer himself) was going to launch yet another project, joining forces with shows sound judgment on his part. is the drummer and co-founder of , and whatever one might think about their assaultive style, his work has always been a remarkable example of precision in support of chaos, his tight yet frantic bursts of rhythm bounding all over the place but also giving the noise around him a unexpectedly stable framework. is a good man to have around if you want to get noisy, and that's what had in mind when he and formed , who make their debut with 2020's . Part of 's charm is his gift for finding something tuneful in even his most outre music, and that's certainly true on , where a pop-friendly vocal hook floats over the top of "Zeppelin 5," acoustic guitars add a freak-folk ambience to "The Purple One," and damaged but swaggering rock fuels "Double the Dream." While there's a playful element at work, much of sounds ugly, and that's just the way they wanted it; the dominant elements here are harsh, bellowing vocals, ragged volleys of heavily distorted guitars, and freaked-out electronic manipulation. 's drumming really does set this apart from 's more left-of-center efforts -- if noise rock has a , it's him. 's style is very busy, but there's a strong internal logic to his explosive bursts of percussive energy, and the closing "For Strangers Entered the Cement at Dusk" demonstrates that when he needs to lay down a groove, he can do so with clean efficiency. is a collaborative project in the best sense, as the strengths of both and are at the forefront on , and if this album is less accessible than most of 's recent releases, it has excitement and daring to spare. ~ Mark Deming