Oozing Wound album review – Whatever Forever

Windy City jokers Oozing Wound show off some serious songwriting chops with new album

Oozing Wound album cover 'Whatever Forever'

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Asked to describe this, their third album, Zack Weil, guitarist and vocalist of Chicago based stoner-thrash trio Oozing Wound, replied: “Tipper Gore’s worst fears incarnate.

A horrifying concoction of apathy and malaise wrapped in a delectable sheet of hatred, drowned in a bath of contempt… Great for parties.” And who could argue – the grungy, slacker thrash of their debut, Retrash, and 2014’s pummelling Earth Suck, would start a party in trauma ward.

But focusing solely on the jokes, and the fact that they look like what would happened if Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times At Ridgemont High formed a band, is to ignore the blistering musicianship and songcraft that Whatever Forever -chucks out in spades. Diver erupts in a relentless, Mastodon-like charge of riffs before launching an epic, soaring solo that wouldn’t sound out of place on an Isis album. The winding, twisted Weather Tamer, too, lurches into alt-metal progressiveness, but it’s the cosmic, rapid-fire pelt of Deep Space that most gets the denim bristling.