Record Label: Roaring Colonel Records
Genre: Post-Punk

I popped this in while my wife was watching an Animal Planet documentary on prairie dogs. Prairie dogs utilize a sophisticated system of high-pitched chirps and squeaks to communicate. Seems cute, but I was trying to listen to this album and I could barely hear the band above the squeaking.

I asked my wife to lower the TV and, from the continued dry wipers-on-windshield sound, thought she was ignoring me. I finally realized after a minute of marital discord that the chalkboard scraping was coming from my speakers.

Needless to say, this post-punk/art-punk album has its abrasive moments. I always feel like an old man when I complain about noise, and let it be known far and wide that I like dissonant/jagged music, but We Are Hex needlessly go out of their way to be irritating. It’s unfortunate – most of the tunes are solidly written and for the most part well executed. But their annoying bits are doubly irritating for being both aesthetically unpleasant and pretentious.

For example, “Birthplace of the Mystics” is a solid rocker, but the guitars sound like a row of sea lions barking in pain. On “We Are the Goer,” it’s the singer’s turn to chirp like a hissing cockroach.

Not every song channels the animal kingdom. “Gold/Silver” and “Teeth Collection” are killer tunes – swirling guitars, driving drums, wailing/yarling vocals – kind of sounds like the Sugarcubes and Siouxsie & The Banshees doing meth with Fugazi and The Locust. (Do those references make me sound like an old man again? Well, anyway, great stuff.)

A couple of songs are dull or hurt by lengthy intros, filler, etc., but if We Are Hex could stick to peppy, dynamic post-punk rockitude without the gothy melodrama or pretentious noise, we might have something truly great here.

Bottom Line: If these kids cleaned themselves up, they could become the next Turtles!
Notable Tracks: Gold/Silver, Teeth Collection, Cutter/Giver
Overall Rating: