AFCGT – S/T (2010) [Sub Pop] // Grade: A

This is why AFCGT rule. Their longest, most epic jam? Second track on the album. 10+ minutes of bluesy, noisy, repetitive fuzz that sounds next to nil like the first song and could, I suppose, inspire someone to flip the record early or give up altogether. But it doesn’t strike me that AFCGT simply didn’t think about pacing. They thought about it, then thought better of it; anyone with a problem can go fuck themselves.

Now combine that attitude with the very real sense that playing the vinyl backwards will reveal some sort of devil message and you’ve just encapsulated the entire AFCGT project. This smooshing together of Seattle experi-punk veterans A-Frames and Golden Climax Twins is confrontational from the word go, be it via the sludgy explosions of “Black Mark” or the terrifying séance noise of “Reasonably Nautical” and “Nacht”. There’s not a lot of in-between for the quintet (featuring, yes, three guitarists); they’re either breaking every window in your house or quietly meditating on some freaky German-or-Latin-I-can’t-tell chant.

And that’s another reason AFCGT rule. Rather than try desperately to marry the differences between the A-Frames’ heavy throb and the classic Golden Climax Twins sound collage, the combo band revels in the disconnect, highlighting every inch of dissonance. Whether it’s weird, stuttery pacing—which, by the way, just adds to the seasick sense of the thing—or the guitars creeping and crawling over underwater vocals, there’s not a moment here that feels all that comfortable. But it’s like fever-blister discomfort, you know, the kind you bite over and over because you sort of love the pain. Tough to bear and impossible to resist; in other words, a pretty perfect full-length debut.

- Rue Sauvage