Customer Reviews

Mutiny / Bad Seed

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one of those albums, that at first listen, i gasp, jump up and down, shake my hands wildly and start chanting "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!!!" IT ROCKS!!!! Nick Cave and his cohorts create such believably dark and menacing atmospheres that you can feel the fear. it's sooooo raw. all the tracks have this sleazy evil mood...like a strip joint in the swamp at night. all the tracks are perfect; it's one of those perfect cd's that can be listened from start to finish. it's just so coherent. if you want a goth cd...i mean real dark goth...get this cd. it basically screams "Hands up! Who wants to die?"...well actually Nick does. ;-) you can hear all the Stooges influence...It's like "Nightclubbing" meets "Search and Destroy"...super charged doom and gloom. God Bless You, Birthday Party!

To categorize this CD as "goth" or "blues influenced" or "Stooges-like" is a gross oversimplification. Nick Cave is at his best bible infused morbid-ism. The addition of Einsturzende Neubauten's (and future Bad Seed) Blixa Bargeld on `Mutiny in Heaven' is pure genius. The CD in its entirety is pure genius. A timeless classic, for sure.

An excerpt from `Deep in the Woods':

Now the killed waits for the killer
And the trees all nod their heads, they are agreed
This knife feels like a knife feels like a knife that feels like it's feed.
Yeah I recognize that girl
I took her from rags right through to stitches (pray for me now)
Oh baby, tonight we sleep in separate ditches.

If "Junkyard", the quintessential Bithday party album was the great earthquake in the punkscene, the songs on the following two E.P.'s (and the last of The BP) can at least be called some severe aftershocks.

The opening scream-out on "Sonny's burning" says it all: "Hands up who wants to die!" howlers singer Nick Cave in pain. And the deconstructive podium-busting of "Junkyard" goes on.
Then "Wildworld" follows, with its slow pacing drums and howling guitar; the song trashes the mind and soul and causes many lonely abandoned off spring to dance with their own shadows in the dark.
There seems to be more echoing effects in the guitars, and more contemplation and sanity in Cave's voice - not that the man is cured of whatever demons are troubeling him, thank God not, but the tight ensembling-work of The Bad Seeds come more and more into vision here.

"Jennifer's veil", a stiring emotional statement, hints at future Bad Seeds output; more singing tendencies than just spoken word or screaming, this track solely is worth a finger.
"Six strings that drew blood" is an early punk version of one of the best songs on "The firstborn is dead" album, the second Bad Seeds release. Although very rarely mentioned, is "The six strings..." version on the "First born..." album still one of Nick Cave's best pereformances, and here on the Birthday Party E.P. we have its original blueprint.
"Swampland" still has the chaos of "Release the bats" from the "Junkyard"album, as have the multi-vocals on "Mutiny in heaven".

Call it aftershocks, call it more matured and pollished, call it a musical testament, it's still all classic TBP.
This last release doesn't show any signs of decline or perishing of the band. It's just "Junkyard" little successor, and a good reason to to ponder on the question where Nick and the mates would have gone to, if The Bitrthday Party hadn't crashed that early in its own personal dark history.

A manic Nick Cave backed by music stripped down to the raw bone. Rowland S Howards guitar cuts through the dirty rythms and the melancholy like a chainsaw and it's unresistable. The Birthday Party ended their career with a true masterpiece. They never sounded better than this ...

That Conqueror Worm, that writhing slug that was the Birthday Party came to rest here..."in separate ditches"...RIP 1983.

Just as they hit the final nail on the head, the BP crumbled to dust. No small wonder this wasn't an album at all but 2 EP's later compiled together for CD. Without a doubt Mutiny/Bad Seed towers above their previous debaucheries It all came to a fore here & where was there to go after? Of course, frontman, Nick Cave later when on to an inspired solo career but you haven't heard him till you've heard this.

"Sonny's Burning" greets you with the abandoned war cry, "Hands up! Who wants to die!" What follows is a sonic/lyrical assault, stringing up the proceedings & setting them on fire.

"Wildworld" is a love song teetering dangerously over the precipice. "Deep In The Woods" is a break up song like none other, sarcastically mocking its own willful morbidity. "Jennifer's Veil" could have come straight out of Edgar Allen Poe, while "Swampland" howls up a storm of paranoia like nothing since The Stooges' Funhouse.

Though "Pleasure Avalanche" might just be the only disposable track, "Say A Spell" is an overlooked gem penned by signature guitarist Rowland Howard. A talent oft overshadowed by Cave's antics.

Speaking of which, "Mutiny In Heaven" cannot be denied. One of Cave's best BP songs. A Season in Hell, where the protagonist manically tries to escape the clutches of self-destruction on "doctored wings". A perversely optimistic ending to all the havoc wrought herein.

Sure, the self-enamored "Goth" movement pounced on The Birthday Party like flies on carrion, but these guys had no idea what "Goth" was. They were too busy making an unholy racket. I mean how many "Goth" bands had a bass player decked out like an Urban Cowboy?

So just sweep all those cobwebs aside & take this for what really is: a ferocious, careening blast of Rock & Roll. As explosive as Funhouse or Raw Power. As DIY as the Velvet Underground. The sound of a band on fire. Leaving only ashes to haul.

The "Mutiny!" and "Bad Seed" EPs were some of The Birthday Party's finest works. It's great to have them on one CD with a couple of bonus tracks to boot. Speaking of which, one of them, "Pleasure Avalanche", is okay but not as strong as the rest of the material here. This older, alternate version of "The Six Strings That Drew Blood" (later re-recorded and released on the Bad Seeds' album "Your Funeral...My Trial") is faster and harder than the later version and I sort of prefer it to the Bad Seeds' version. "Mutiny In Heaven" is an indicator of things to come on the first Bad Seeds album, "From Her To Eternity", with the inclusion of Blixa Bargeld on guitar and it's also the best song about heroin addiction I've ever heard. "Wildworld", "Fears of Gun", and "Say A Spell" are amongst some of my favorites on this CD, while "Deep In The Woods" and "Jennifer's Veil" are both slow and sinister by Birthday Party standards and mesh well with the sound Nick Cave would later adopt on the Bad Seeds albums. This CD is highly recommended!

If you don't love this cd (and many people won't), then you must have a very different taste in music then me. Yes, it's different. Yes, it's offensive. Yes, it's incredibly powerful. Mutiny in Heaven is insanity on a disc, Six strings that drew the blood is awesome, as is everything on this disc. Simply brilliant, and best disc to start a birthday party obsession with.

Truly great art/punk album, their darkest and best work. Some of the humour of the earlier recordings is missing, although no album whose first song starts with the line: "HANDS UP! who wants to die". could be called humourless. it would be worth five stars except for some weaker songs like six strings that drew blood and pleasure avalanche but both these were not on the orginal LPs so it's not the birthday partys fault. A great album violent, rocking and tottaly amoral just the way i like em!