Album Review

Turbowolf – Covers EP

• 5th Oct 2012

The Bristol based psychedelic thrash quartet Turbowolf have spent the last 12 months cementing themselves as the forerunners in noise. After releasing their debut album to a plethora of critical acclaim the band have demonstrated their unrelenting ferocity on a number of high profile tours and festival performances. Not a band to sit patiently and record their follow-up record, Turbowolf have opted to release their own take on four tracks from established bands spanning select guitar-driven genres.

The ‘Covers EP’ sees the band take their rapid guitar shredding and gruff vocals to tracks by The Hives, MGMT, Lightning Bolt and Jefferson Airplane. Unsurprisingly the structured noise sounds best when actively destroying the delicate melodies created by the original artists; ‘Somebody to Love’ is a particularly downturned take on a psychedelic classic, resulting in a brutal interpretation of a somewhat whimsical original. Similarly, adaptations of The Hives and Lightning Bolt focus on excessive savagery, sounding harsh and entirely visceral. Where the band adopt a softer approach on ‘Electric Feel’ the contradiction between the relatively benign verses and turbulent chorus provides an early alleviation from the adamant guitars.

Within the thirteen minutes on offer Turbowolf further demonstrate their ambition to creative unadulterated chaos. By taking comparably popular tracks and injecting their signature thrash sound, they are able to induct a new cohort of fans into their ether. That said the EP does little to push the band forward and verges dangerously close to disarray. Whereas the debut LP contained sufficient changes in song structure to diversify the sound, ‘Covers EP’ reluctance to moderate serves to damage the overall experience. The EP indicates the importance of variation while retaining the overall mentality of the record.

‘Covers EP’ is a perfectly suitable stop-gap between albums, and contains the potential to attract new audiences, but there is little on display that pushes the boundaries of the music already created on the debut release, and it is entirely doubtful as to whether this was its purpose. Covers often contain a certain novelty value which is evident during these four tracks, and at its best the EP hints at a more direct and intense approach on the forthcoming album.