Review: Black Pussy – Magic Mustache
If you only ever first heard of Portland rock band Black Pussy in the past week or so, it likely isn’t because of their dense and heavy blend of psychedelic rock, stoner rock, and alternative rock. Their name has been rather prominent in headlines across numerous music publications (including this very one) after their controversial name resulted in them being having to cancel a concert in Raleigh, North Carolina because of it being considered offensive. This has caused a major rift in the rock and metal community about whether or not the name is offensive, whether or not the Raleigh venue’s actions were justified, etc. While I’d love to sit here and give my cis-het-white-male opinions on the matter, I’m a music critic and not an armchair social commentator, and since I can’t even pretend like I give a shit about this whole debate to begin with, instead let’s talk about their latest full-length LP, Magic Mustache.
Magic Mustache, the sophomore LP from this hot button stoner rock band, presents itself with 10 tracks and 44 minutes of abrasive and hazy rock music with an emphasis on instrumental progression and layering. Listening to any of this band’s material, it’s obvious that all five of Black Pussy’s members are essential to the band’s sound, and they don’t just have one or two extra guys to wipe sweat off of the foreheads of the ones that do matter. All over this record are copious amounts of guitar layering, whether they’re rhythm or lead, as well as subtly-implemented synthesizers that are almost acidic in tone. Fat, husky guitar leads characteristic of this style are matched with energetic fill-heavy drumming and rumbling bass guitar. All of the instrumentation on this LP comes together in ten songs that burst and wind with lots of effects and instrumental interplay.
Compared to other bands that may be classified as “stoner rock”, Black Pussy offers up a surprising amount of variation on Magic Mustache. While the track “On Top of the World” feels like a somewhat straightforward sludgy rock song you might hear a genre great like Torche perform, the song “Butterfly” is way more progressive and multi-faceted, and has an immensely over-the-top climax to it. Even the vocals on this album have a few different flavours to them. “Protopipe” features a fairly normal empowered stoner rock tone and delivery from lead singer Dustin Hill, but on tracks like “For the Sake of Argument”, his delivery feels very much indebted to Layne Staley, as does his inflection on “Butterfly”. Meanwhile, the song “Happy”, in its vocal style, guitar tone, and overall lethargy, feels like Black Sabbath worship through and through, though it maintains its own instrumental feel enough to not feel like a complete rip-off.
Black Pussy has a lot of good things going for them, but I still have a hard time enjoying this record. It’s really a shame, and for the most part it comes down to this album’s production, recording and mastering. The way Magic Mustache sounds is, to my ears, borderline painful after listening to more than a song or two in a row. And not because the band is really heavy and loud, but because they’re insanely compressed. All of the sound and instrumentation is brick-walled and flattened until you’re just getting this shrill and barely legible wall of instrumentation constantly smothering each other, and leaving every instrument just fighting to be heard in this mess. Case in point, the opening track “Let’s Start a War”, where, after a pretty decent slow-paced instrumental intro, the track immediately explodes into this heavy, sludge metal-esque piece, where the guitar dominates the mix far too much, and is constantly drowning out Dean Carroll’s drums, which are so muddled and dominated that at times you can barely even tell they’re there.
On the surface, it seems like Black Pussy is shooting for this rock sound that’s really epic and grandiose. Take the closer on this record, the title track, “Magic Mustache”, where it seems like the band is going for an almost post-rock-esque display of cinematically explosive instrumental interplay, but the hideous over-compression on this track sucks any semblance of grandeur out of the track, and it renders the song nearly unlistenable. While I can respect and appreciate Black Pussy’s ambition on this front, the production ruins it in every way. I could see some people defending this album’s production by saying, “This is underground! This isn’t that Nickelback shit! That’s why the production sounds like that!” But frankly, if you took another massive and layered underground rock record like Swans’ The Seer and compressed it down to a bodyless disaster area of brittle frequency clashing, its fantastic and expansive songwriting and ambition would also sound massively unpleasant.
And it’s unfortunate, because I do think Black Pussy delivers some solid rock songs on Magic Mustache. The aforesaid track “For the Sake of Argument”, for instance, has a simple, albeit infectious hook to it. The way the song “Protopipe” slows way down in tempo halfway through and gradually builds itself up again is an impressive divergence. Easily my favourite song on the LP is “Lion’s Breath”. The chorus on this track is nothing short of fantastic, as are the drumming and guitar playing all throughout the track. And overall Magic Mustache is a cohesive album, with a nice flow to it, and a good amount of variety throughout its ten tracks. It’s an album I’d like to sit here and praise through and through, but given how difficult it was to listen to this album repeated times for this review, I’d struggle to call this album anything more than wasted talent and potential. It leaves me fantasizing about how great these guys would sound with a thick, punchy Kurt Ballou production-job.
At the end of the day, Magic Mustache is an LP with good intentions and solid performances marred by awful production that makes even this album’s brightest spots abusive to the ears. However, I do think Black Pussy is a band well worth following into the future. They demonstrate a lot of creative drive and technical ability on this LP, and as the band gains a higher profile, gains more fans, and has the opportunity to work with more proficient producers, I could see Black Pussy making some truly great music down the road. For the time being, though, I don’t foresee myself returning to Magic Mustache unless I’m ever feeling a desire to blow my eardrums out faster than you can say, “Let’s start a fucking war! Let’s burn this mother down!”
Your friend,
Jess Casebeer
(Magic Mustache can be purchased via Black Pussy‘s Bandcamp page.)