(Ramp Local, out Fri 4 Sep 2020)

A dull review (hopefully something you’ll never find here at The Wee Review) can often consist of a list of the songs followed by simplistic comments. Your Song is very moving. Careless Whisper displays powerful vocals. Master of Puppets is loud. Quite often name-dropping the song title can be a devious way of sneaking closer to the word count. A good review avoids this road map formula. However Godcaster’s debut LP Long Haired Locusts might just be worth bending the rules for.

Apparition of the Virgin Mary in my Neighborhood, Serpentine Carcass Crux Birth, The Skull!!!. If there’s anything worth knowing about Godcaster, it’s that they produce song titles so colourful, that they make Morrissey’s seem beige in comparison. Don’t worry though, the songs more than live up to their titles.

They’re funky. They’re mad. Songs meander and oscillate. They groove and unwind. They approach the self-indulgent freestyle line and dance gracefully around it. Tracks like Don’t Make Stevie Wonder push beyond the polite faint praise of “promising”, and slam dunk intangible indescribable feelings like “fun”. They will keep your ears on their toes and if you think that’s tough to wrap your head around, just wait until you hit tracks like Christ In Capsule Form.

Even when songs aren’t very good there is a kind of inherent awe that more than compensates. A childlike glee that comes from witnessing this immensely talented band get halfway through a song then just decide to start making noise instead. There is an almost Frank Zappa like ability to utterly infuriate and confound listeners.

All reviews tend to pad around the question: “But is it any good?” That’s because art doesn’t have an answer. Nor a metric. Even a scale or a line-graph would be out of question. Godcaster can’t be pinned down, never mind measured or studied. Instead Long Haired Locusts goes straight for the heart. You might feel joy, you might feel frustration, you might feel pleased, you might feel cheated. But by Christ (capsule form or otherwise), you will feel something.