Wet Nuns are two dudes, one plays guitar and one plays drums. Together they churn out fuzzy-as-fuck red-eyed blues rock that is much more akin to the sounds of the delirious and unforgiving Arizona desert than of the lush Yorkshire Dales. Their latest EP Broken Teeth marks the next step in the duo’s raising profile after a momentous 2012 saw stacks of praise heaped upon them for their incendiary and increasingly notorious live shows, as well as being bestowed with Artrocker’s award for Video Of The Year.
Despite the potential drawbacks of using only one amplified instrument, the guitars form an impregnable wall of fuzz so thick and all consuming that guitarist Rob must have to wear a lifebelt to avoid drowning in it. The down-tuned strings fill out the low end, the fuzz flooding into any dead space within the mix that is looked after by producer Ross Orten of MIA and The Kills fame. The riffs are furious slabs of hard rock infused with gritty blues and the smoke of several hundred spliffs. Not consigned to simple moronic chuggery, Rob repeatedly runs up and down the fret board, showing some rather inventive guitar work manifesting most obviously on the title track’s bluesy licks. Drums are beaten with all the subtlety of a coked-up Andre the Giant wielding two cricket bats as stickman Alexis is seemingly unable to decide whether to hit the skins to within an inch of their lives or simply demolish his kit. Together the instruments create a cacophony that renders any other instrumentation ultimately futile; leaving only room for Rob’s gritty howl which is so coarse and ragged he must surely eat gravel for breakfast, washed down with a few Marlboro reds for good measure. ‘All The Young Girls’ eschews haunting backing vocals whilst standout track ‘Laura’ is an ode to every male teenage rock fan’s enthrallment with girls who play guitars with Rob growling “I wish I was that geetar!” over a stomping blues barrage.
‘Broken Teeth’ is music that demands you reach for the whiskey and become a drunken, sweaty mess. Its raw sexuality and pure aggression will have you coming back for fix after fix of Wet Nuns’ ‘death blues’; an exhilarating joy from start to finish.
4.5 out of 5 high fives!