Lice

Post-Punk Götterdämmerung With British Misfits LICE In Belgium

Posted on by JL

2 November 2024

LICE are a post-punk hit team from Bristol, UK. Last September they released
their second longplayer, named Third Time At The Beach (stream/buy it below).
It follows their smashing debut WASTELAND: What Ails our People Is Clear
from 2021.

They’re in the middle of a European tour with fellow Brits Deathletter.

On Halloween night they made a stop on their own, in my hometown of
Ghent (their 2nd visit here), for a freaky Halloween gig. The misfits didn’t
need horror masks to get us all in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre mood.

They have Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (real name: Alastair Shuttleworth, really?)
as their demonic voice right in the middle.

Offstage he’s like the nice guy from next door, on stage he turns into a Götterdämmerung creep screaming his 4 lungs out amidst a blistering cacophony of electricity. Sonic exorcism. Schizophrenic outbursts. Dante‘s inferno in motion. Break-up, break-down. Labyrinth paranoia and other related straight jacket hysteria. Lyrically, he mixes reality and surreality with his hallucinations and accentuates the resulting insanity up there on the podium with deafening shrieks that surpass the legal amount of decibels.

Here’s an idea.

It all felt like having an electric chair experience (again). Scary, blood-curdling and totally maniacal. Awesome, right? You bloody betcha. Go and see them if you can. It’s worth the brain-shock.

STREAM/BUY


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Lice: Linktree


Beware, they only look nice (photo by Dani Bolton – @theredbeanienz)

TOO GOOD TO FORGET – Debut Album ‘WASTELAND: What Ails Our People Is Clear’ By Manic Brit Mavericks LICE

Posted on by JL

24 April 2023

LICE are 5 musical mavericks from Bristol, UK. They’re part of the rebirth of
post-punk in Brexshit England with bands such as The Fat White Family, LIFE,
Silverbacks, Crows, Deathletter, Opus Kink. Back in 2021 they unleashed their
smashing debut WASTELAND: What Ails our People Is Clear. One of the
most fascinating and intoxicating LPs of the last 10 years according to my
ears.

A press statement read as follows (take a deep breath): Wasteland is a wild
Burroughsian adventure melding science-fiction, absurdism and magical realism,
calling fora revolution against the reductive ‘good versus evil’ narratives of popular
satirical music. Arguing that through experimenting with the form of the song lyric
(our most widely disseminated form of creative writing) we can build more nuanced
popular discourse around the implicit forms of bias that ail us, Wasteland presents
complex characters changing their minds–along with their bodies and places in spacetime.
Set in an unearthly liminal space populated by shape-shifters, time-travellers, talking genitalia and ectoplasmic specters, the prose text evolves as the characters do: warping into cut-ups, soliloquies and even plays. Satire of satire.

‘Persuader’, one of the many highlights

TUTV‘s wrote: “After trying to make sense out of the lyrics of all Wasteland songs and
after trying to make sense out of an interview – that read like a Dostojevski book – manic frontman Alistair Shuttleworth had with Louder Than War, I had a what-the-fuck is going on nightmare and couldn’t stop listening to the LP. A razzle-dazzle roller coaster from start to finish, not one dull moment. Imagine 2005 SF movie War Of The Worlds, but even more wasty.

In my triggered mind I saw Mad Max crossing the warfare remains of a wasted place
called Earth with his cool Stanley Kubrick space car while watching The Return Of The Living Dead on a giant iPad in the sky. To be honest, one of my best nightmares in months.”

STREAM/BUY
‘Wasteland’ here.


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And live Lice bring their Wasteland to the people with a bulldozing force I witnessed
in Antwerp and last Saturday in my hometown of Ghent (some pics below). Go and get
to see them when they’re in your neighborhood.

An idea of live Lice.

Picture this


What you see is what you get


‘Don’t need this’


Female synth touch


Hallucinations in motion

LICE: Facebook – Instagram

Bristol Misfits LICE Brought Their Wasteland To Belgium

Posted on by JL

Alice and kicking reviews

3 March 2022

Band: LICE
Who: Bristol’s post-punk misfits
Album: WASTELAND: What Ails our People Is Clear – debut LP

BAND VISION
(according to my mind)

After trying to make sense out of the lyrics of all Wasteland songs and after trying to
make sense out of an interview – that read like a Dostojevski book – frontman Alistair Shuttleworth had with Louder Than War I had a what-the-fuck is going on nightmare.

I saw Mad Max crossing the warfare remains of a wasted place called Earth with his cool Stanley Kubrick space car while watching The Return Of The Living Dead on a giant iPad in the sky. To be honest, one of my best nightmares in months, although I had another paranoid day-after and I still don’t what sort of visuals dominate this band’s mind.

BAND SOUND
(to my ears)

Let me make this easy for you. Ever heard of the post-Brexshit-punk rebirth with bloodhounds such as Yard Act, Crows, Ditz, Life, Black Midi and Black Country New Road?
If you did, you know what to expect (approximately). If not, imagine sharp barbs of frustration resonating like the previously unreleased soundtrack to a Sodom and
Gomorrah party.

Something like this.

LIVE impressions:
(to my eyes and ears)

A 45-minute Sturm und Drang exhibition, showcasing a great part of their amazeballs debut LP and a couple of new nail biters. Alistair Shuttleworth, the man in the middle looks like the son of Babybird‘s Stephen Jones, barks and howls like a Mark E. Smith wolf on speed and waves his arms like a ballerina who greets her audience before starting to pirouette.

Explosive stuff with screeching guitars and DIY synths noises and when the bass
player moves upfront it’s bloody the roof goes off. I wanna see them again, asap.

Something like this…

Buy your own wasteland here…


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For one night only, in Antwerp

(all live photos by Turn Up The Volume)

LICE: Facebook

Flabbergasting Debut – ‘WASTELAND: WHAT AILS OUR PEOPLE IS CLEAR’ By Bristol Daredevils LICE

Posted on by JL

9 January 2021

Band: LICE
Who: A band marrying a complex new sound, incorporating industrial,
minimalism and prog, influenced by Bristol’s vital avant-garde scene.

Album: WASTELAND: WHAT AILS OUR PEOPLE IS CLEAR – debut LP
Released: 8 January 2021

Info:: It’s a concept album written as a piece of experimental short fiction, taking cues
from the likes of Brian Catling, William Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The story in itself
has been a massive undertaking for the band which has taken the best part of two years
to put together.

The band describes the album as “a wild Burroughsian cat-and-mouse adventure, melding science-fiction and magical realism to call for a revolution in satirical music. Arguing that by unsettling the conventional forms of the song lyric, politicised music can step beyond ‘good versus evil’ narratives to promote more nuanced popular discourse around the implicit forms
of bias and iniquity that ail us”.

Turn Up The Volume says: Listen up, folks! This is a flabbergasting debut with an astounding impact. Imagine those two other past/present Bristol gangs, wayward
post-punks The Pop Group and punching punks Idles, spending a couple of weeks
in quarantine together with Frank Zappa‘s whole catalog as an inexhaustible source
of inspiration. The final result would be unpredictable, but definitely spectacular, just
like this mind-and-head-spinning tour de force! It’s not just a rock record, it’s a five-star jaw-dropper! Don’t miss it! It’s already one of the bets debuts of 2021.

Stream/buy here…


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LICE: Facebook

TURN UP THE VOLUME’S KNOCKOUT TRACKS For February 2020…

Posted on by JL

Best killer tracks of the month…

Eleven superb tracks that energized my sonic
bloodstream this month. From roaring to moody,
from shaky to gloomy. Here is the sonic dope…

1. ‘Hot Slick’ by PINS
Without a shadow of a doubt one of the most exciting bangers of the year! Utterly cool!


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2. ‘Scavengers’ by MECHANIMAL (Greece)
A high-powered industrial, darkwave drone that will blow you of your socks…

3.’Conveyor’ by LICE (Bristol, UK)
Ominous and thunderous jackhammer. Armageddon is just around the corner…


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4. ‘See What I See‘ by SINKA (Watford, England)
A powerhouse smack and ear-splitting outburst that will trash your speakers…

5. ‘Paranoiacs’ by CHEMTRAILS (Manchester, UK)
A flaming ripper that encourages you to get up in the morning and kick some macho ass…


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6. ‘Dreams Like Drugs’ by LIONS OF DISSENT: LIONS OF DISSENT  (Wolverhampton, UK)
Transcendent psychedelia at its dazzling best. Sonic dope to get eight miles high to…

7. ‘Hopeless Romantic’ by OH BROTHER (UK)
Flamboyant razzmatazz! Cracking stuff! Rocking dynamism…

8. ‘Talking About You Man’ by PLASTIC SUN (UK)
This cutting indie power-pop stroke is a biting rejection of appalling toxic masculinity…


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9. ‘Babanod‘ by HMS MORRIS (Wales)
An endearing art-pop pearl and mesmeric electro beauty. A spine-tingling experience…

10. ‘Your Days’ by LES FLÂNEURS feat. HANNA TURI
Colourful, sparkling, romantically orchestrated musing that puts a big smile on your face…

11. ‘Holiday’ by ATTAWALPA (London based, UK)
A sensual, soothing slo-mo groove with a glam touch reflecting the desire to drift away…

All together on Spotify…

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See/hear you next month…

Bristol’s Noiseniks LICE Dropped New Apocalyptic Single ‘CONVEYOR’…

Posted on by JL

New sonic impulses…

4 February 2020

Band: LICE

Who: Foursome from Bristol (UK). “Drawing from EBM, industrial and minimalism, they forge a new line in driving, experimental art-rock. Taking cues from science fiction and early 20th century polemicists, their lyrics use vivid prose-based vignettes to set out bold stances on satire, humanity, and the content and direction of art.”

Track: CONVEYOR – brand new single released on their own label – the song “brings us to The Wasteland, the nationless space inhabited by the new music’s stories and cast of characters. We are introduced to its raging, Shakespearian protagonist The Conveyor, and their mission to expose the mysterious R.D.C.’s plots to engineer the human race’s self-destruction; a journey that will take us through sci-fi odysseys and Burroughsian grotesques. LICE thereby declare a new period, presenting a satirical music commensurate to these militant years.”

Score: After a shattering intro with destructive guitars, hammering percussion and biting vocals this staggering wallop works its way furiously to the apocalyptic chorus that will blow you fiercely away. This band is on a purifying mission through the wasteland this deranged world has become. Their incisive and haunting observations of the ongoing human catastrophe are sonically translated in a menacing and thunderous wall of sound. Armageddon is just around the corner.

Be ready to experience this nightmarish shock wave right here…


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LICE: Facebook