HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: www.pitchshifter.com – Pitchshifter
By the time 1998 rolled around, Nottingham’s PITCH SHIFTER were beginning to ride the crest of a wave. The industrial rock four piece of brothers JS and Mark Clayden, guitarist Johnny Carter and drummer DJ Walters had three albums and an EP under their belt, along with a notorious live performance at Phoenix Festival in 1995; the day before their show, the band’s manager arranged for a tractor to draw an enormous crop circle in the shape of their famous eye symbol in the field next to the festival site; when PITCH SHIFTER actually played, they became the first band to have their set stopped early due to an overenthusiastic crowd rushing the stage.
Something was stirring; now the band needed to strike while the iron was hot. Although not critical to what would follow, they dropped the space in their name and re-stylised as PITCHSHIFTER. Certainly more importantly, though, was their return to being a five piece; the new man on board was guitarist Jim Davies, who knew a thing or two about taking bands to the next level. Admittedly, THE PRODIGY were already a household name when he joined them as a live guitarist, but 1997’s The Fat Of The Land became their second #1 album in the UK and Davies had made two telling contributions, laying down guitars for the two lead singles that gave THE PRODIGY their first #1’s in that particular chart – Firestarter and Breathe.
Crucially too, The Fat Of The Land was one of the first occasions that music which could be loved by both rave fans and metalheads was given such a high profile exposure; thus, the door was open for more records to follow. And this is where we find the newly christened PITCHSHIFTER who, 25 years ago this April, released their fourth – and to date, best selling – album, also their first on new home label Geffen: www.pitchshifter.com.
Having joined Geffen from Earache, having a major label behind the band was a big factor. “It was a dance with a different devil” JS told The Portsmouth News in 2018. “We had much more financial support and much more creative and understanding support staff…we just treated it all like Sex Pistols’ EMI days and smiled and nodded in meetings whilst creating as much havoc as we could away from the conference table.”
That backing still shows through on www.pitchshifter.com a quarter of a century later. It’s certainly a product of its time – you can TELL it was made before the turn of the millennium – but there’s a refinement about it that makes it stand out from anything PITCHSHIFTER had done before. Opening track Microwave is a ball of furious, chaotic energy, yet is tightly knit and doesn’t feel sloppy. Subject to Status harks back to the punk of the late 70’s through its snotty-nosed vocals and W.Y.S.I.W.Y.G is frenetic and wild to the point that, if a young Corey Taylor was performing vocals instead of Clayden, the track wouldn’t have been out of place on the self-titled SLIPKNOT album, released a year later. Even so, lead single Genius remains the stand out track. The electronic elements that fire through the drums and overdriven guitars like laser beams are still as true as they always were, while the huge, snarled hook of “If dysfunction is our function, then I must be some kind of genius” continues to cut like hot knife through butter in one’s ears; there’s a reason it’s PITCHSHIFTER‘s most listened to song on Spotify.
In addition, to have an actual website in 1998 was almost unheard ; yes, the internet was growing, but many personalised pages were still being created through the likes of Geocities. www.pitchshifter.com was the band’s genuine domain name, a real novelty, yet there was more behind it, particularly when combined with the artwork of a smiling, stereotypical, white middle-class American family slowly melting; never one to shy away from barbed views on conservative politics, as the world headed towards a new millennium and the rise of a digital age that would no doubt have scared many (remember the Millennium Bug that never happened?), PITCHSHIFTER were playfully mocking those in plain sight. Eventually, the domain name lapsed – something Clayden described as “a burden being lifted” – and was picked up by a Japanese company hawking vitamin supplements. As of right now though, it’s available to be purchased for a cool $6,395; a shade over £5,000.
“www.pitchshifter.com is too mired in 1997. In twenty years, you’ll be able to pick up this CD and know its exact birthdate” Pitchfork snootily proclaimed upon reviewing the record and giving it a score of 5.2. In fairness, as mentioned above, they were right in that you can date it, but (and not for the first time) they were way off the mark in suggesting it was already behind the times on release. The album sold 60,000 copies in the US, nearly double that of previous effort Infotainment? and PITCHSHIFTER never reached those heights again; 2000’s Deviant was seen as a commercial failure and 2002’s PSI saw the band return to a smaller label; within a year, they were on indefinite hiatus. www.pitchshifter.com, however, remains a cult classic and, when the band reformed to play some shows in 2018, it was in part to celebrate the 20th birthday of the record, a bile-filled punch in the face of riffs and samples that has remained on its feet since release; and it likely always will.
www.pitchshifter.com was originally released on April 7 1998 via Geffen Records.
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