Feersum Ennjin - Feersum Ennjin E.P. - Review

**** Feersum Ennjin

Feersum Ennjin – Feersum Ennjin E.P. - Review

Feersum Ennjin
Feersum Ennjin E.P.

Anybody who’s spent more than a few minutes in the company of any record by prog-rock chaoticians Tool will be painfully aware of the fact that they ain’t exactly masters of the art of understatement. Hardly a jaw-dropping surprise, then, to find that the new project from Tool’s bass-player, song-writer and some-time video director, Paul D’Amour, doesn’t exactly put the ‘b’ in subtle, either.

Presumably named after Iain M. Banks’ phonetic pot-boiler of the same name, Feersum Ennjin (sic)’s debut five-track e.p. kisses you tenderly on the nose for about twenty-five seconds and then proceeds to mercilessly wring you out from gizzard to ankle for the remainder of it’s twenty-two minutes.

Opening track ‘Lines’ (which has you feeling as though that’s exactly what you’ve been snorting) is a poly-rhythmic barnstormer with more hooks than a fly-fisherman’s tackle box.

‘Solid Gold’ is as close as D’Amour gets to a ballad … Not even the same post-code. A rather neurotic and throbbing acoustic verse gives way to the only chorus in history to be so big it’s visible from space.

‘U-Boats’ and ‘Dragon’ give a size-ten, steel-toed hint of what can be expected from a Feersum Ennjin album … Sonic mayhem. Very high maintenance, very high-strung and very manic; like that psychotic girlfriend you had that was so much fun that you didn’t mind when she stabbed you in the thigh with her needlework scissors … Or maybe that was just me.

Majestic, over-blown, aggressive and a little bit like Tool with Tim Wheeler from Ash singing, but a riot nonetheless.

http://www.feersumennjin.com

Raven