Circus Metal.

Seemingly influenced by Mr Bungle, Marilyn Manson (circa Portrait of an American Family) and System of a Down, Dog Fashion Disco aren’t particularly easy to pin down. Opening track “Leper Friend” opens into a wall of slow, heavy guitars and b-movie/lounge act keyboards, before bursts of long, growling words come through. The song then switches between various segments, a demonic hardcore builds up to a catchy, cheesy crooning, which in turn becomes eerily epic. After about 4 minutes, the fighting between these musical styles ends, along with the track.

This method is continued throughout the album, to varying degrees. Not satisfied with the quiet-loud method of song writing, Dog Fashion Disco songs are quiet-loud-louder-cheesy-quiet again-xylophone solo, leaving the listener a bit on edge. The most accessible track, “Headless”, has a characteristically heavy riff set against vocalist Todd Smith calmly and beautifully stating that he’s “coming to rape and murder your family”. After the verse-chorus-verse, then comes the aforementioned xylophone.

But despite the frankly weird nature of the music, it’s actually really catchy. Whilst all the songs have heavy elements to them, partially nullifying their quirky nature, all develop into a pretty catchy “chorus” at some point. The result of this is that a while after the song has finished you are left singing lyrics like “Don’t fall asleep or we’ll mutilate your genitals”, or humming something about winged rats. Something to frighten people on the bus with, then.

So, unpredictable heavy, cheesy, catchy and epic music, American trash culture lyrics about boredom, death cults and serial killers, and a vocoder-disco song called “Vertigo Motel”. Oh, and System of a Down’s excellent and equally unhinged vocalist Serj Tankian contributes guest vocals on “Mushroom cult”. Not everyone’s cup of tea.