TERMINAL CHEESECAKE - Angels In Pigtails LP (Pathological/1990)

There were only a handful other records - Half Japanese, Die Kreuzen, Chrome, Melvins and Bongwater spring to mind - I liked more than Terminal Cheesecake's Angels In Pigtails ca. 1991-'92. To me, it was the bomb, the ultimate collision of heavy-duty droned-out sci-fi rock 'n' roll a la Chrome/Helios Creed, industrial sound scapes a la the Limey school of noiseniks (Current 93/Nurse With Wound/Coil) and the crunching heaviness of the Swans and the Melvins (ie - my kinda bag). I didn't actually own this; it was my brother's. It's post-Xmas time... after a family lunch, I decided to "borrow" it for a while to see if it held up. It has. If memory serves me correctly, I believe this was purchased at the time on the strength of a rave review in Flipside mag, and when you're that young and eager to hear new sounds, you take the punt. The Blue Note rip-off cover (w/ liner notes by "Nat Jerkoff"... ho ho ho) made this an eye-catcher, and I do recall that at the time the Pathological label - headed up by Techno Animal/Ice/GOD dude Kevin Martin, who's recently made his name again in the highly-praised The Bug project (well, they won Album Of The Year in The Wire, if that counts for anything) - was considered kinda hot for this brand of misanthropic noise-rock duelling, that kinda weird netherworld at the dawn of the '90s in UK music which was just catching the tail end of grindcore, where all kinds of slo-mo musical slobberings were being offered up, equal parts Black Sabbath and Throbbing Gristle. Terminal Cheesecake, if you read the Myspace link attached above, actually stuck around for quite a while; I bought one or two of their later albums 'round the 1992-'93 period (when I was in Hong Kong, of all places), and frankly I never dug 'em a whole lot, but Angels..., it still sounds mighty fine to these ears. The production has just the right level of lo-fi crunch, huge walls of Skullflower-ish guitar squawls (there's some membership crossover in the long and sordid history of both bands, somewhere), barely discernable human wails and screams throughout, occasional forays into static-laden atmospherics and near-dub basslines and even a Residents cover thrown in. It's an awesome combination of guitar-overload rock 'n' roll and non-bogus industrial gloom. Many years later, I can say once again that my taste wasn't totally rotten as a young man: Angels In Pigtails is a lost gem of UK u/ground music, and from what I can gather, it remains out of print and out of reach for the masses. Do your searching!