by Khagan Aslanov (@virgilcrude)
It was always the longest of long shots, but suddenly, against all conceivable odds, a second golden age of The Jesus Lizard is underway. The revered noise-punk outfit that, for many, perfectly snared everything there was to love about the 90’s underground, returned last year after a near 30-year absence with a beastly new album, a protracted tour, and now an EP of yet more material.
It all happened just as the four-piece always did it, with a winking casualness, the same way they used to drop albums that forever redefined what it meant to be loud, ugly and full of filth. For those who’ve been following the band since the beginning, it’s been a long tantric wait with no firm promise of anything. And like everything else that came before it, the Jesus Lizard did it on their own terms, willfully oblivious of reunion trends that have cornered most of their peers, both in the mainstream and underground. Rack didn’t try to recapture the industrialized impetus of their Albini era, or the slithering experimentalism of the Capitol years. It was just suddenly present, in all its gnarled glory, urgent and ageless and ready to kill.
Which brings us to Flux. The Jesus Lizard were never prone to hoarding material, throwing songs into the ether as it came along, but just like Lash in ’93 and their self-titled EP in ’98, Flux seems less a heap of toss-offs, and more a mini powder keg of tracks that simply didn’t fit on the long-player.
And it is all still here. The rhythm section of Mac McNeilly and David Wm. Sims is tighter than a constrictor knot, Duane Denison’s fretwork is as agile and salacious as you remember, and the incomparable David Yow howls, gurgles, retches, and speak-sings edicts of impudent misanthropy like time hasn’t flayed an inch of him.
First, “Cost of Living” switch-hits between a grisly arpeggiated churn and propulsive forward lurches. Then, the central riff of “Westside” coils around itself endlessly until you feel concussed. And finally, just as you come back up for air, Yow, tongue squarely in cheek, atonally chants “I can’t stand the sight of you” over the feral plodding of “I’m Tired of Being Your Mother” before Denison lets out a sharp-angled squeal of guitar so eerily glassy, it’s like a new unnerving clarity descends.