Description

Nightstick. Nightstick, Nightstick, Nightstick. Remember them? Of course you do – did three monumentally heavy and increasingly more far-out albums for Relapse back in the late nineties? No? Had a dancing clown named Padoinka on stage with ‘em? Yeeeeeeah, those guys. In 1999 they disappeared. There has been enough material for another Nightstick LP floating around for a good few years now, and it has almost happened a couple of times before, but it’s thanks to ever-excellent Scottish label At War With False Noise that comeback album Rock ‘N’ Roll Weymouth has finally surfaced. So, was it worth the wait? Of course it bloody well was. Opening proceedings up is the bands anthem and theme tune Nightstick, a raucous, rawkin ripper that proceeds along the same lines as my two Ultimatum faves United Snakes and Pig In Shit before nose-diving into an atonal mire of sludgy rhythms, guitar mangling – probably literally – police sirens and gunshots. It is fucking awesome. Deadly business-as-usual to some extent, if not a little more vicious than before, but elsewhere, however, there are some serious departures. Let Your Freak Flag Fly is built around a choppy acoustic guitar riff, urgent drumming and a dirty-as-you-like bassline, topped off with Cowgills acid-fried lead guitar, touches of slide and Alex Smiths total fuck-you vocalising. An interesting turn is taken during the latter half of the tune, wherein the band jam out some filthy blues-punk as a series of answer phone messages play out, left for Williams by what is clearly the worlds wussiest promoter attempting to weasel his way out of booking Nightstick for his show, interspersed with Cowgill bursting out into some of his patented frenzied wah-wah lead action. Impressive work, and also, impressive weaselling from the unnamed promoter. Now we enter what Williams has referred to as the Ummagumma portion of the album, wherein each band member contributes a solo piece – as on the afore-mentioned Pink Floyd album. First up is Cowgill’s short-but-very-sweet downhome slide-driven bluegrass acoustic piece Lila Claire Blues, which really is quite lovely. Said loveliness is swiftly undone by the acrid filthmongering dirge of Smith’s piece, Ode To Lord Vader – an extended meditation on the dark side of the force built around a loop of the Dark Lord of The Sith himself, Darth Vader, reminding us Now I Am The Master, and the sounds of Smith simultaneously grinding out the Imperial March theme from the Star Wars soundtrack on a bass that sounds filthier than Jabba The Hutt’s underpants, and attacking said bass with what sounds like a series of instruments of torture and an angle-grinder. Finally, Williams lets rip with Impressions Of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude In C Sharp Minor, a sound-collage of sorts featuring tape loops of marching feet, barking dogs and general military-sounding action spliced together atop a halting version of said Rachmaninoff tune, held together by Williams muscular drumming. Decidedly odd, on the whole, but 100% in fitting with the wilful Nightstick agenda. Finishing up the album comes the one-two punch combo of slovenly sludge-rocker The Boot Of Discipline – a hard pounding number with a relentlessly rolling feel and some fine spaceward-bound playing from Cowgill – and the band’s roughshod lysergic take on the central theme of Strauss immortal Also Sprach Zarathustra, as popularised on the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey…and thoroughly UNpopularised here. It’s good to have these perverse bastards back again, and Rock ‘N’ Roll Weymouth is one of those releases that will really separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak – like musical Marmite, you’re either resolutely IN or completely OUT, with no half measures and no punches pulled. If you haven’t heard them then we can say that Nightsick has their roots in their previous band, early-hardcore legends Siege but their direction is and has always been much different. Call it acid rock, noise rock, noise groove, sludge, and you might have an idea but yeah, probably not really. All I can say is that Nightstick are a bunch of people who do exactly what they want and if you can’t keep up, well, that’s your fuckin problem maaaan.

Track listing:
1. Nightstick: a.) Call me Nightstick b.) Outtro c.) Requiem
2. (Let Your) Freak Flag Fly-featuring Kennys Cancellation Message
3. Lila Claire Blues-instrumental
4. Ode To Lord Vader: a.) The Circle Is Now Complete b.) Now… I Am The Master
5. Impressions of Rachmaninoff’s Preulde in C Sharp Minor
6. The Boot of Discipline
7. Also Sprach Zarathustra (Theme from 2001)