As with any comprehensive remaster, with interest resurrected Bitch Magnet are here afforded the opportunity to introduce themselves to, and in turn educate a more youthful audience previously unaware or perhaps unappreciative of the unadulterated raucous they once channeled. For others it proffers an occasion to return to revel in perhaps some of the most impactive hardcore-styled stuff ever to have dribbled out of America and for those last year fortunate enough to have subjected themselves to the onslaught within a live context, to right a fundamental wrong or two.
Whilst we may inhabit an actuality of unfeasibly swift musical fluctuation in which tastes and tendencies change in the time it takes to stamp on a distortion-disgorging stompbox, this comparatively positively antiquated material holds a present pertinence, as mutated strands of its DNA can be heard in anything and anyone from ATP faves Les Savy Fav, No Age, Mudhoney and so on and so forth through to Sonic Youth and beyond, not unrealistically to mainstream sludge pluggers Foo Fighters and obscene funk-rock outfit RHCP. Its packaging meanwhile, despite containing some of the best bits of the late '80s, is something of a modern-day wonder: housing three discs in a rather nifty and quite slight gatefold card thing also containing an abridged Bible of flyers and previously unseen photos, a reinterpretation of the sleeve artwork to third and final effort Ben Hur adorns its cover and equally niftily, this is as good a place to start as any.
Although remastered and consequently rendered as sonically clean as ever, the recording itself retains the magnificently grotty, scuzzy filth of old. From the doomsday tolls and unholy clatter of opener Dragoon right through to the brutal, if sublimely, startlingly melodic Sadie, here is a record that has not merely stood the test of time, but has voraciously trampled all over it in unapologetically muddy clodhoppers. Slapped bass and speak-sing vox perpetuate the gloriously malicious Mesentry and the brilliant ruination and devastation of Spite y Malice, simultaneously ensuring Park recites the role of the blood-handed hero-cum-villain of the piece, the mellifluous gunge of Crescent its highlight.
As card is then unfurled, debut EP Star Booty (heftily bolstered by industrial slabs of previously unreleased alternative versions) oozes from elaborate packaging, burrowing toward insertion in CD drive. It's a far more languid, intemperate, and ultimately unhinged collection of cruddy dissonance, Big Pining marrying resplendent chord progression to thoroughly dirgeful crunch and extravagant cymbal clangour. The pace relentless; the mood reckless, compositionally it lacks the maturity purveyed later on in their fleeting career: C Word pertains to a scatty punk aesthetic, while Sea of Pearls sounds somewhere along the lines of Marc Bolan smearing his guitar in tar to discharge a viscous power chord chug. This dilated take on Star Booty is a dish served bracingly cold and heartlessly, thrown in your still-unsettled grimace.
Finally, located within the deep, dark heart of both Bitch Magnet discography and this release itself is Umber, which opens up with the splurging, wild surges of Motor, its gargantuan guitar-led chorus sounding monumental enough to scrape the sky, ferociously piercing it to the point of precipitation. Like Henry Rollins fronting some alternative, distortion-streaked take on Leon Klatzkin's Adventures of Superman Theme, while Bitch Magnet may never have been fighting "a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way" Motor rocks and rolls at a rate that feels "faster than a speeding bullet; more powerful than a locomotive". The loud/ quiet dynamic of Clay (a rare pointer towards post-rock propensity) comes across purer than ever previously, its woozy bass lines and twitching drums accentuating an already-great sense of suspense. Thus we suggest you throw wide these reissues; unbolt the entrance to the chamber of your heart in which your all-time beloveds reside; and let Bitch Magnet wreak a most spectacular havoc.
