"We wanted our band to be like an Elephant in your living room. That's why we gave ourselves trunks."
You'll have to excuse your reviewer for quoting from a band's press release, dear reader, but it's tough to dispute the thinking behind DEATH FROM ABOVE'S surreal philosophy, isn't it? Especially when you also find out that the band's two participants Jesse.F.Keeler and Sebastien Grainger live in a funeral parlour (in Toronto) and - bar the occasional Moog-y bit - refuse to use anything other than bass and drums to lever up their deliciously primordial racket.
Even if that peerless rep doesn't grab you, their debut single "Blood On Our Hands" surely will. Quite probably like a Sumo wrestler on ketamine. Although it's loosely related to the needle-sharp punk/ funk of !!! and Radio 4, "Blood On Our Hands" mainlines on metal heaviosity and chucks in basslines sounding like Lemmy auditioning for Grandmaster Flash's Furious Five, while Jesse and Sebastien revel in the sort of throat-scouring call and response vox that can only be described as 'brain-flaying'. They do relent and let in the occasional Moog oscillation, but even that looms like a malevolent flying saucer in a ragged, Mission of Burma-type stylee.
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My promo copy also features several further examples of the band's diseased, Machiavellian darkness, but let's save those for the album review, due in Autumn. In the meantime, DFA are due to play a trail of bizarre UK gigs in the kind of venues that only everyone's favourite loose cannon Pete Doherty would approve of. Even if you can't blag your way into those, start with this here critter. The sound of psychosis yanking at your doorknob has rarely seemed so attractive.
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