By Jhoni Jackson
Brisbane, Australia’s Slug Guts are a little frightening. The band’s third and latest LP, Playin’ in Time with the Deadbeat on Sacred Bones Records, is dark in spirit, a post-punk jaunt in the glorification of the grotesque. Freakish sax accents drums that echo as if recorded in a dungeon, and singer James Dalgleish—or JD, rather—elongates vocals with a damning raspy growl. Thankfully, they’re not so sinister as people.
“We’re definitely not sitting around in a dark, cold basement with candles,” says guitarist and primary songwriter Jimi Kritzler. “We’re quite lighthearted.”
A good time for these guys isn’t a séance or a screening of Faces of Death. Eager music critics make for funnier fodder for these guys. When Kritzler didn’t like questions one writer sent him via email, he opted to “go to town,” he says. Among other fictitious anecdotes, Kritzler told the poor scribe the band came together as youths—while in juvy.
“The questions were obscenely mediocre and so clearly standard,” he explains.
And while the evil elements in their music take the forefront, the guys in Slug Guts don’t necessarily intend to be terrifying.
“It’s not purposeful,” Kritzler assures. “That’s not what we think of when we write songs, but I can see how it could be taken that way. It’s just more ugly. It’s ugly music, basically.”
Check out Slug Guts tomorrow night at the EARL with the Blind Shake, and locals Wymyns Prysyn and Aku Yu. Watch the video for “Scum” below.
