THE SCARAMANGA SIX: Horrible Face (Wrath)
Posted: May 28th, 2005, by Tom LeinsGrandiose pop-noir from the hotly-tipped Wrath Records stable in Leeds…
‘Horrible Face’ is so bombastic it hurts… A swooning, crooning anti-tribute to an “ugly, ugly cow” by Leeds-based body-fascists/Wrath mainstays The Scaramanga Six. It’s easy to admire their epic aspirations, cheeky subversive streak and face-ache taunting agenda. It’s less easy to enjoy the record itself. Not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with it (the coupling of lavish strings and mean-spirited lyrical content is a nice idea) but the song is tainted for me by the nasty whiff of novelty-pop piss-taking that hovers nearby.
As if to reinforce the point (and bolster their comic credentials), B-side ‘Elemental’ put me in mind of The Darkness trying to coax Electric Six into the back of an old estate car with sweets, puppies and novelty records. Make of that what you will.
However, final track ‘The Throning Room’ is a frantic dose of sweaty care-in-the-community noise-rock, and seems a lot more honest as a musical statement.
Whilst this single certainly isn’t as ‘horrible’ as i’ve probably made it sound, it’s hard to care too much about something as tongue-in-cheek and ultimately (gulp) soulless as this.
Sorry.
Tom Leins
Tom is a relative obscurity in diskantland. All we know of him is that he's from Devon and that he writes a fanzine called 'Voices from Downtroddendom', so draw your own conclusions from that. Our conclusions are that he's probably got a funny accent and a bit too much time on his hands. So he'll fit right in around here.