Genghis Tron is certainly the worst name* for a band since….i dunno… The Kennedy Pill….no, actually it’s the worst name for a band ever. I mean, do you get the idea of like marauding savagery allied to redundant technology in a kind of steampunk-battle metal hybrid? Sheesh. Could you be more frigging obvious lads? Genghis Tron!?? It’s pathetic. Try saying it out loud without laughing. Try saying it to someone else without blushing. “Heard the new Genghis Tron, Roger?” The new…what…..sorry….?” “The new Genghis Tron?” “ Genghis…?” " Genghis Tron.. what’s wrong with you Roger!? Genghis Tron!!”

They have to be crap, right? Errr….

Well, actually they were pretty crap roundabout the last album as far as I can recall (out on superhip Crucial Blast) but have pulled off a bit of a surprise with “Board up the house.” (cue hardened Tronnies* insisting via email that I’m an asshole as they have always sounded exactly the same, etc..) Yes, it is rather angry, the vocals are all glass garglingly shouty, yes it is filled with staccato riffing and hyper-compressed drum fills, yes it does suddenly shift to bits of post rock drift and err… weird bits of melancholic disco and, errr…trancey Kraut keyboard runs…..Shall we have some obscure-ish reference points*? Imagine Heldon 4 meeting Pig Destroyer’s Phantom Limb with hints of Six Finger Satellite, a dash of glitch, a pinch of theremin, a soupcon of skittery percussive ticks…and…is that…can it be….. a distorted bagpipe intro on the ten minute long “Ergot”!? Rather brilliant and kind of like the Mars Volta’s angrier* idiot cousins, but in a good way.



*though the cover art is pretty great, you have to say.


*Genghites? Genghers? Ghenghtrontians?…hang on, isn’t that the title of a poem by D.H Lawrence….?

*cause that always endears people to you, dunnit.

A: “ Is that new X album any good”

B: (with a knowing half smile)“ Hmm, yeah, it’s kind of early Joey Beltram meets Astor Piazolla mixed in with a bit of Buckwheat Zydeco.”

A: “ Ahh, ok.. cool…”(under breath) “ What a cunt!”

*Perhaps this is why. It isn’t pretty, is it? “Simian” is certainly the mot just (click refresh to reveal!).