On This Devil is Them! it sounds like Antlered Man are on tons of steroids, and copious amounts of Holsten Pils; one of those is almost certainly the truth. Frankly, if that’s not a winning combination for an arty, scuzzy, damned noisy experimental London rock troupe to be on then I don’t know what is.
At any rate, it’s worked for Antlered Man on This Devil is Them! Following up a debut as impressive as Giftes (Parts 1 & 2) was always going to be a tricky task, but this is one band that was never going to go down the route of merely trying to repeat their successes. Instead the quartet have taken a road that, whilst taking them to new places, has also managed to solidify their unique identity as a band.
Opening the record is the perfectly ordinarily titled ‘The Ballad of Hamhock Fullsleeve’. Where in the past Antlered Man have tended to lull the listener into false senses of security before inflicting a ton of noise upon them, here they avoid any messing around and get on with things. It’s a rollocking way to start an album, even if the song itself lacks a little of the unique approach of ‘Outrages 1 ta 3’ or ‘Platoono of Uno’ from the last album. ‘GDZ’, meanwhile, is more definitively Antlered Man, with the vocals being particularly recognisable and the knack for Faith No More-esque hook writing (by which it is meant that they can squeeze hooks alongside massive bouts of noise almost without you noticing) stands out too, proud and unmistakable.
It’s when the album reaches ‘Claude the Ideal Bloody Gentleman’ that you realise Antlered Man have truly grown into something completely apart from so many other British noise rock acts. At over eight minutes in length it may be a tad overlong, but the ambition on display makes that unimportant. The same is true of ‘Audition Tape for Hades’, the penultimate track. You can’t blame the band for not dropping any part of these tracks on the cutting room floor because what they’re going for, which could perhaps be described as a droned out hybrid of Future of the Left and (the) Melvins, is such an awesome prospect that even hearing the band try it out twice as vaguely as they do here would be exciting enough to overlook any slight issues in execution.
So, as This Devil is Them! draws to a conclusion, with the family friendly closer that is ‘My Surname, My Cum’, whilst it’s clear that this band haven’t quite nailed everything they have attempted here, what they have done is further accentuated what makes them stand out so much from the pack. There’s a certain something to Antlered Man that, in all seriousness, belongs to nobody else other than them, and that alone makes This Devil is Them! worth a listen.
