Uniform
Perfect World
12XU

Perfect World is not my perfect world, it is not your perfect world, it is not anyone’s perfect world save for some dead existentialist whose idea of a perfect world is only shared by freshman liberal arts majors who’ve had their mind totally blown by pot and a longhair adjunct in intro to philosophy. This thing is dark and dreadful. It’s the audio equivalent of city juice, the putrid brown-yellow waste water of unknown origins seeping out of urban streets and stinking the skies. Yet, this world created Ben Greenberg (The Men) and Michael Berdan (Drunkdriver), out of mashed and mangled guitars, harsh effects and harsher vocals is wholly necessary in that cliched, only pain can bring happiness kind of way.

Listen to that title track. Dudes are dialed into dread. Listen to Berdan, how every word is informed by vice and slippery with spittle, like a Johnny Rotten too rotten England 1977. The beats anxiously fire like a heart on ecstasy, the bad kind of ecstasy mixed with god knows what the hobbyist chemist had around his garage. I’m thinking bleach, or Draino. Greenberg, meanwhile, lays down this monster doom riff, and rides, rides that riff as if the next time will be his last.

On “Buyer’s Remorse,” Greenberg channels Josh Homme’s desert rock boogie. But rest assured, this is no feel good hit of the summer. A bird’s nest of mangled effects and Berdan’s rants keep this one solidly in the no hope zone.

The net effect of all of this suffocating dread is that when the barest bit of sunlight breaks through, as on the robot ambient ballad, “Lost Causes,” it’s as if a lifetime of burdensome depression has been lifted with one shot in the veins. There is hope, for you, and me, and freshman liberal arts majors.