Pain Teens - Myspace tracks review

We've been wanting to review Pain Teens for ages, it's just taken until our relaunch to do it. What you have with Pain Teens is one of several projects fronted by the ecclectic Bliss Blood, who is neither a teen nor does she appear to be in pain. What they do is forge a strange soundscape of part spoken word, part haunting vocal, with a political slant that you may or may not agree with that's sometimes only visible in their on-screen media.

Not to everyone's taste perhaps, but if you like the more eccentric edge of rock, then chances are you'll find yourself listening to this set of four tracks on their Myspace, stuck in a near trance particularly to the melodic snake-charming of the music and ghostly vocals of "The Sweet Sickness". The uneasiness of "Count Magnus" suggests some nightmarish dystopia, clanging industrial metallics and otherworldly screeches, it wouldn't be out of place in a remake of Metropolis or 1984. It's almost discomforting to listen to, yet not in a "turn it off!" sort of way, but you're almost glad to get to the next track as if awakening from a particularly uncomfortable nightmare. The strangely titled "Brown Jenkin" is an almost old-school industrial clamour of rough-edged beats, joined about a third of the way in by distorted vocals and howls that could be instrument or human. Perhaps this is what Frontline Assembly would sound like on super-strength sedatives. Last of the four, "World of Destruction", brings a spoken-word dystopia as spoken by Bliss Blood over a cacophony of strange pulsating sounds, forming some sort of subliminal melody like the beating of a metallic heart. Whatever it may be, it's not a happy tune nor a happy set of words. All in all, for some reason we thought when we first heard them that they were less strange than this.

NoiseMatters rated: (2.5/5)