The Fierce and the Dead - On VHS

It’s been a while since The Fierce and The Dead have put out a full-length album and an EP. And while I’ve admired what Matt Stevens has been doing since 2010 after reviewing three of his solo albums and The Fierce and the Dead, it has finally shown that Matt himself has now come a long way, and the new EP from The Fierce and the Dead called On VHS, it’s one of the most experimental avant-futuristic rock EP’s to come out this year in 2012. While there’s no singing and vocalization’s on Fierce and the Dead’s music, the band pay a debt to the three genres: Post Rock, Experimental Rock, and a little taste of the Rock in Opposition (RIO) sound of the ‘70s.

Perfect example, 666.6 kicks the album off with a lushful beautiful dream turned into a deadly nightmare. A vicious touch of feedback with an alternative math sound with a blend dosage of Radiohead’s sound, it’s raw, mean, and creepy at the same time. Then all of a sudden, the three pieces that follow along with the opening track, lets you know that this isn’t your grand-daddy’s progressive rock album that he left in the cupboard for a long time.

Hawaii is a full throbbing hardcore Crimson-like punk sound that has a vicious similarity of Matt’s own sound of aloha on the guitar as if he was writing the score for Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. As for the title track, which sees the band going into a mellowing sonic soundscape of some of the late ‘60s psychedelic vibe of the American coast, Part 3 closes the EP with a dooming post- apocalyptic sunrise into the valley including a bass line going off into the mountains as Stevens lay some sounds of The Doors and Radiohead that resembles the Strange Days and Kid A period.

The band have finally done their homework well to expect the unexpected and take the experimentations to lift you up from your feet. While they still are very busy lately, The Fierce and the Dead’s EP is an exquisite, twisted, mad, and out of this world album. Let’s hope what they might have in store for us years to come with a follow up to Morecambe in the future.