Based in Turin, Italy, the trio Sloks specialize in garage punk, raw and aggressive, with their second full-length A knife in your hand dishing out a formidable stream of primo bash and squall. Ivy Claudy handles the vocals and the pummeling of a floor tom, Tony Machete pounds on a larger drum set, and Billy Fuzz rakes the guitar strings. Although a wide-ranging style doesn’t seem to be high on their list of priorities, the record’s 11 tracks offer enough twists to keep matters fresh for the duration, and while they’re consistently focused on dark themes, it’s an angle that avoids faltering into schtick. The album is out now on black or red vinyl, CD and digital through Voodoo Rhythm Records.
Sloks debuted with a 4-song 7-inch in 2017 and followed it up the next year with the full-length Holy Motor. Those releases effectively established an approach that hasn’t wavered. Upon cueing up A knife in your hand, the unkempt griminess of their sound becomes apparent in mere seconds. If surely connected to the more destructive regions of the garage impulse, Sloks are just as tethered to what’s been called weird punk. Bluntly, the band’s sound is damaged in the best way possible.
Think Flipper, think Chrome, think Tales of Terror, and think of the dozens of bands that fall into the Killed by Death subcategory of late ’70s-early ’80s punk rock (like “UFO Dictator” by fellow Italians Tampax and “Cola Freaks” by the Danish band Lost Kids. But Sloks’ twistedness is distinguished by a trashy-pulpy aura that’s intensified with a borderline transgressive edge, perhaps reminiscent of the rawest low-budget drive-in flicks of the ’70s and the video nasties of the decade following.
Indeed, a few of the tracks register like soundtracks to montages of cinematic mass slaughter (chainsaw massacres and toolbox murders), and it’s directly due to the voice of Claudy, who is credited not with vocals but screams. But the album’s opener “Dillinger” is more of a scuzzy distorto-pulser with the vocals a distant croak.
Once Sloks work up their potent throb, the track is done, giving way to “No makeup,” its blistering heft suggesting reverb-soaked garage punk (again, very much akin to an entry from one of the Euro volumes in the Bloodstains KBD series) but with a repetitive drive that brought North Mississippi-style blues to mind (though I don’t want to overstate this association).
The relentless flailing and pounding continues in “Burn baby burn,” which is where the audio-carnage really starts to max out, as Claudy sounds like she’s in the throes of a convulsive fit and with echo that suggests she’s deep inside a dark chamber. The next cut fucks around with Diddley’s beat, which might be why it’s titled “Bad to the bone” (yes, that’s a George Thorogood song, but he and the Delaware Destroyers did cover Bo’s “Who Do You Love?”), the cut further injected with noise rock levels of blare.
“Crank it up” boosts the tempo a bit for a hard-driving chugger, while the title track brandishes roots swagger psychosis infused with a haze of buzzsaw guitar, an equation that extends without a hitch into “Ruin it all.” But it’s with “Killer vs. killer” that Sloks broadens the spectrum a little, integrating some garage-y organ into the mix, an additive that does nothing to lessen the track’s off-kilter touches, e.g., the drowsy stretches of Claudy’s singing.
By this point, all the ingredients in A knife in your hand’s recipe have been unveiled, but if “Exotic store” lacks in surprises, the band gets the measurements just right. However, at four minutes, “SBANG!” lingers around a tad longer than most of the record’s other selections, which, along with an atmosphere that’s slightly less primal, allows for the sturdiness of the songwriting to shine through.
The same is true for closer “Last grave,” as the organ returns to the scheme and the ambience inches nearest to a neo-’60s approach, but with a feel that’s appealingly dirge-y. It’s spiced up with bursts of amp-gunk that threaten to bury Claudy’s vocals in the mix. Weird and unruly but with a solid foundation, it delivers A knife in your hand a strong finale that lends promise to Sloks’ future possibilities.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
