AMG Review of Invisible "Liftee" Pad/Gap-Tooth Clown

Eduardo Rivadavia
All Music Guide

After their 1992 space metal debut album met with total commercial indifference, Zen Guerrilla would embark upon an extended journey of self-reinvention; a half-decade Odyssey in exile that saw the band traveling from club to club to club, all of them spread like so many Greek isles across America's hazardous alternative ocean. Finally, the group found a safe harbor at Insect Records, which undertook to revive their recording career via two EPs presaging Zen Guerrilla's looming return to the mainland of full-length albums with their electrifying retro-rock convulsions (and later combined, minus one track, onto this single CD by Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles imprint). 1996's Invisible "Liftee" Pad, in particular, helps set down the group's future distorto-psych-punk blues template with the likes of "Chicken Scratch," "Slip Knot" and "Dirty Jewel" -- all of them pushed to the limits of chaos by Marcus Durant's alternating vocal and harmonica wails. By contrast, "Wee Wee Hours" is a relatively clean-cut rockabilly number, and "Tin Can" a tipsy shuffle that eventually explodes into more unrestrained mayhem punctuated by slide guitars. As for this EP's successor, there's the more unfocused Gap-Tooth Clown, whose instrumental opener "Auto Pilot" merely pumps listeners up for Durant's charismatic entrance on the oddly grungy "Crow" (think early Soundgarden with added distortion). "Lipstick" then turns the spotlight back to guitarist Rich Millman who really dominates the song, but it's arguably the ensuing "Gospel Tent" which runs away with the EP's best song prize, fulfilling the promise of its title with accompanying handclaps and truly exultant calls to spread the good news of rock & roll. Finally, the more deliberate "Unusual" takes its sweet time at slowly ascending towards a piercing climax. Individually, neither EP would change the world, but together they provide a fuller picture of Zen Guerrilla's proposed direction on the triumphant trio of LPs soon to come.