It would be a cliché to talk about ‘an album of two halves’ and in the case of Tropical Trash’s ‘UFO Rot’ it would also be rather misleading. It’s an album of three-quarters and one quarter, the last quarter representing a point at which it swerves into wildly different territory, to the extent that it almost sounds like a different band playing on it.
The first seven tracks are a squalling buzz of choppy, hectic, abrasive punk noise. With running times of three and a half minutes or less, the influence of Dischord and Touch ‘n’ Go label artists is all over it. Battering away aggressively at cutty, three-chord riffs and going at it hell-for-leather, they come on like Fugazi trading riffs with Tar.
Then, eight tracks in, the grinding nine-minute ‘Knowing’ slows things to a crawl. It’s not just the pace that’s different, but the tone, its larval sonic flow forging a behemoth stoner / sludge beast. The final track, the eight and a half minute ‘Pink Sweat’ is again slower, sludgier, doomier, and adds a jazz element to its heavy metal thunder to create the soundtrack to the most hellish trip ever.
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While the disparate and seemingly contradictory elements of the band’s sound remain unresolved, ultimately it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t detract remotely from the fact that ‘UFO Rot’ is a belting album
Tropical Trash Online
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