Sounds Like Hell is an irregular feature on old and new noise rock.
Noise rock favours the higher frequencies — think of the trebly drum machine throughout Big Black’s catalogue or Roland S. Howard’s shrill guitar on early Birthday Party records. The point seems to be less about creating a confluence of different musical elements than a constant friction between warring instruments. What’s lost in a lot of that translation is the groove; rhythm is traded in for chaos when the two need not be mutually exclusive.
Georgia trio The Powder Room take that lesson to heart on their debut LP Curtains. Like most good power trios, they over-compensate – and I mean that in the best possible way – producing flurries of controlled rage that are meticulously crafted and far larger than the sum of three men in a room making noise. Frontman Gene Woolfolk sermonizes with tremendous gusto as he screams “I am just as terrified as you” on ‘Dead Pet’ over cacophonous riffs and barks like a deranged drill instructor on the frenetic ‘Alcoholics and Meth Addicts’, but it’s on the almost radio-friendly ‘Frayed’ where the trio truly shine with punishing riffs, a killer bassline and surgically precise rhythms. For fans of The Jesus Lizard and pigfuck.
