Excuse the cussing...I'll keep this brief. Melbourne's Cuntz have developed into a formidable outfit. I caught them play live in a city basement venue just two nights ago and reached that conclusion. Of course, I reached that conclusion 12 months ago, when I first heard their second LP, Solid Mates, on the estimable Homeless label (of course, I have to say that, but I do also believe it), but it was confirmed and solidified just this week past. A four-piece unit dealing in a particular strain of post-punk/HC grunt-rock, it's easy for such a band not to be good. Most practitioners of the neo-pigfuck genre - oh my lord, I just said that - do not make music I wish to hear. It's pure schtick - faux-redneck nonsense, at best - the sonics often resulting in B-grade sub-Antiseen slop-rock. We've all been witnesses. Cuntz play the game differently: they have songs and make music I place on repeat - in the privacy of my own home. That is a highly coveted position (not really), where wheat is sorted from chaff.
Sure, Cuntz sound a lot like a Venom P. Stinger/Flipper hybrid, but if you're of the opinion that such a point in the musical universe is a miserable place to inhabit, then you've probably just stumbled upon the wrong music-based blog to read. They have dynamics, ace guitar riffs, a rhythm section which makes sense and a singer - let's call him 'Ben' - who doesn't just ape some sort of cheeseball 'I'm on the fuckin' edge, duuuude' routine when the spotlight's fixed on him. In other words, the tunes deliver. Their first LP, Aloha, released (also) on the Homeless label earlier in 2013, didn't make a whole lotta sense to me. Its musical crudity had me thinking the band should've ironed out the songs a little longer before committing them to tape, but hey, I really should give it a good listen all over again.
Solid Mates comes in a swish gatefold sleeve and may or may not still be available. I've seen copies still floating around Melbourne, so it at least remains in circulation of some sort. The production, for a local scuzzbag outfit, is surprisingly punchy (thank Alex MacFarlane and the ever-present mastering skills of Mikey Young) and if you give the track above a spin you'll recognise that it's not all just pig-grunt Aussie-rock swagger, but a driving momentum and buzz which mutates Mark E. Smith, Suicide and some sort of garage-dunce beat. They're good, of that I am convinced. Yanks love 'em (they've toured there); many folks in their homeland choose to ignore them, but that's perhaps to be expected. Get on it. New live LP out, which I believe has pretty much been and gone upon release. I await more studio goods.
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