MUSIC: SHIT THE COW – Cavelord

Shane | 7 June 2018 | Reply

MUSIC: SHIT THE COW – Cavelord
Independent
December 2017
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
8/10

The little village of Rissna in Sweden is so far north that it is practically in the Arctic Circle – a place where the concepts of day and night blur far beyond the shade of what the rest of the world finds relevant, and some say The Old Gods still flourish… which is going to skew its inhabitants’ world view somewhat.

I have long championed Shit The Cow – a group of four seemingly anti-social Swedes who created their own genre: scrapyard rock – and this is their debut album, hot on the heels of five excellent, challenging, artistic, confronting and enjoyable EPs.

They readily admit that elements of punk, metal, stoner and garage rock go into the essence of Scrapyard Rock, and I’d suggest no little post-punk nihilism be added to that mix as well. On this album their sound seems to have taken a fuller form, a more distinct personality.

Theirs is a world with a fiercely independent sound, an oblique way of looking at the world, and a subversive darkness to it. If all that sounds dauntingly bleak, then rest assured that STC have a sense of humour as well… they just bury it deep. But it’s there in the lyrics to The Gathering (“the roar of the cow”) and You Brought A Knife (To A Gun Fight).

Part Bowie (Elias Nilsson’s sax on Shelter is a great touch), part The Fall (more The Fall, to be honest), part art project, part middle finger at the world, STW are challenging, sure – but that’s what all great art should be. The Old Gods would surely agree.