ALBUM REVIEW: Spleen & Goad – Iron Monkey
Nottingham’s masters of misanthropic sludge IRON MONKEY make a welcome return with a slightly changed lineup but still spitting the same unrelenting venom that they did when they returned with the vicious comeback album, 9-13, back in 2017, and indeed their late 1990s initial hateday.
Not much has changed when it comes to the music of IRON MONKEY but that is far from a bad thing as the band start from when they left off with the sublimely brutal nature of new album Spleen & Goad and it sees the three piece (that now consists of founding member Jim Rushby, the welcome return of Dean Berry who previously played in the band for the Our Problem sessions and returning drummer Zee Big) in unrelenting form from start to finish.
From the first notes of the opening blast of Misanthropizer all the way through to the albums unsettling last number O.D. Rose with its macabre noise feeding out, this is prime IRON MONKEY and it sounds as if the band are having utter fun in not giving an absolute fuck about anything other than that. There is a part towards the end of the track Exlexed where it seems as if the band are going to finish, but they suddenly just launch into something even harder and this seems to sum up this album and exactly what IRON MONKEY are all about.
This is riff fuelled and scratched out groove laden mayhem in its purest form, done in the purest Iron Monkey spirit, as raw as botulism and still as subtle as brick through a promoters window when they won’t pay up.
From the utterly twisted distorted harmonics that elevate CSP to a higher plain and Rat Flag with its barrage of MOTÖRHEAD indebted noise to the sheer filth of Lead Transfusion and the cathartic primal rage of The Gurges, Spleen & Goad is the sound of that Nottingham rage, still present and still sounding as powerful and hate filled as ever in 2024, which makes for a superbly thrilling listening experience.
No matter what incarnation they come in, IRON MONKEY will always be IRON MONKEY and Spleen & Goad is more than a welcome addition to the sheer hate filled vortex that collects their audio weaponry together.
Riff after nasty riff after horrible riff and groove after hazy groove after uncomfortable groove, this is unrelenting material and the sheer hatred of it (which can be said for everything that IRON MONKEY have ever released to be honest) is so joyous in its hate fuelled misery and anger that the whole feeling is positively palpable.
IRON MONKEY are back again, and still spreading their joyously antisocial and malevolent noise like a plague of locusts for the sheer fuck of it, and long may they continue. This is IRON MONKEY, this is Spleen & Goad, it is primal noise at its most purifying level and this time, it’s rawer and angrier than ever.
Rating: 8/10
Spleen & Goad is set for release on April 5th via Relapse Records.
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