My COH, My COH, What Have Ye Done?
Moscow, the 80s: outside, permanent blizzards bite like shoals of ghost piranha, stripping the flesh from weary millions queueing for stale bread. Inside a claustrophobic adolescent room reeking of semen and fear, beneath a smudgy samizdat centrefold of a leering, devil-finger-popping Dave Mustaine, Ivan Pavlov sits making chords on a contraband Strat smuggled thru' customs inside a hapless uncle. With no amps, no strings, and no electricity, he has to guess at what his beloved Megadeth sounds like, and in his teenage mind the strange new sounds of musical futures pop like spider eggs... or so the story goes. In reality, these are plodding variations on a theme he stated with greater conviction and heft years ago on "No Monsters, No Rock", and for someone with a history at the sharper end of the club electronica scene, the rhythms are oddly stiff, martial and tiresome. Only the closing "Satsugaii" erupts into anything resembling a bonfire of metal's many vanities. Disappointing.
