[engl] Cleveland's KNOWSO is another project from the PERVERTS AGAIN/ CRUELSTER camp and it's every bit as demented as you've come to expect from these lads. Dark lumbering repetitive punk incantations driven along by tom heavy neanderthalic drums, chant heavy vocals, and shoulder shaking bass grooves. These boys have a pentiant for off balance hardcore rumblings and KNOWSO is their newest platform in which to do so.

[engl] With previous releases on Total Punk, Drunken Sailor, and Neck Chop, many of you know Knowso. Maybe you’re even familiar with Cruelster and Perverts Again, projects that share members and sensibilities with Knowso. As for the rest of you, some percentage will hear fifteen seconds of Pulsating Gore and decide it’s not for you. (You’re missing out.) Knowso is too quirky, too nerdy… they don’t rock. But if you have a soft spot for angular rhythms, they’ll pull you in. From there, Pulsating Gore has layers to peel back. Its music is intricate, dense with notes delivered quickly and precisely, layered into interlocking patterns that brim with organic tension. The vocals are not really singing, but memorable nonetheless… a kind of purposefully forceful, yet emotionally detached incantation. And then there are the lyrics, which quick-cut between cryptic images, cracked and fragmented slogans, violent premonitions, and austere documentation of drudgery, words and phrases repeating as their meaning throbs in time with the music. Much of the imagery comes from singer / guitarist / bassist / artist Nathan Ward’s day job as a trucker: roads, highway stops, caffeinated beverages, gory accidents, etc. The images have a darkly psychedelic quality, relating to Nathan’s preoccupation with the ideal of reality “glitching,” a topic Knowso explores both musically and lyrically throughout the album. Also informing Pulsating Gore is Nathan’s intense but ultimately futile struggle to unionize his workplace, with many of the album’s lyrics reading as abstruse but biting analyses of work, labor, and capital. Rather than topics for separate songs, these ideas float through Pulsating Gore’s music and lyrics like garbage in a gas station parking lot on a windy fall day. And that’s only part of the story, so strap in and let Knowso sweep you away.

[engl] All caught up with last August’s blast of herky-jerky darkness from Knowso? Don’t get too comfy, now - nine months later, they’re back with another eight hits of visceral smarts and discombobulating fury. Sounding, as ever, like Big Black firing pellets of snot at their Cleveland forebears Devo, ‘Rare Auld Trip/Psychological Garden’ finds them picking up where they left off with ‘Specialtronics Green Vision’. This being the best part of a year on from that excellent debut, though, they sound wiser, snarkier and more pissed off than ever before - good news all round, then. Opener ‘Boredom In The Valley’ reintroduces their signature tricks but feels more focused; a sub-two minute blast of staggered beats powered by the gnarliest-sounding bass this side of Bob Weston, and a disaffected vocal styling that you’d be tempted to call nihilist if you couldn’t sense the number of fucks given beneath the impassive facade. They pick up the pace with ‘Staring At The Spiral’, which almost sounds like the Buzzcocks unravelling at the seams while a Vogon watches on, before crashing into the smash’n’grab antics of ‘The Plants’ - one of the record’s clear highlights and a frantic, dizzying trip. Along the way are enough bon mots and smartarse quips too make you wonder if they’re taking this as seriously as they should. Let’s not spoil the highlights in advance, but if you’re already on board with Knowso, you’ll know they’re simultaneously utterly hilarious and unquestionably, deadly serious. ‘I could never be friends with a fucker such as you,’ they snarl disgustedly on another of the record’s instant classics, but by this point you’ll already have given your heart over to this most delirious of post-punk/noise-rock hybrids. As the closing cacophony of voices on ‘4th Wonder’ will no doubt drive into your brain with overwhelming force, ‘Rare Auld Trip/Psychological Garden’ (you pays your money and you takes your choice with the title, presumably) is not to be missed.

[engl] Ever since Rocket From The Tombs gave way to Pere Ubu and The Dead Boys, Cleveland’s been producing endless shots of adrenaline courtesy of the wildest, weirdest sounds around. Knowso may not have much sonically in common with their city’s elder statesmen, but they’re following in the same spiritual tradition, blasting away with a take on punk rock that’s tense, spiky and powerful. Following on from their ‘Look At The Chart’ 12” for California’s premier trash-rock stable Neck Chop, and a 7” for Total Punk, ‘Specialtronics Green Vision’ is their debut album - and as full-lengths go, it’s a helluva first offering. Cuts like ‘Calamine’ echo the likes of Devo in their jerked-out fury, but whereas there’s a whole raft of slopcore bands in recent years who’ve focused on the other-worldly side of Mothersbaugh and co., Knowso rub their angular tendencies against clenched-teeth riffage and a brutal sense of righteous outrage. The effect is somewhere in between Steve Albini’s more pointed rackets, Black Flag in both ‘weirdo freakout’ and ‘perfect slice of fury’ modes, and (unexpectedly) even the screwy rhetoric of Welsh wonders Future Of The Left. They have a killer CV - Knowso boast members of Cruelster, Perverts Again and Cloud Nothings among their line-up - but still, this is a record that sounds everything and nothing like those bands, with a healthy number of bonus ingredients thrown in. ‘Peaceful And Extinct’ shows them at their smartarse best, bouncing between (hey, bear with me) tasteful riffology and sheer power, while ‘Digital God’ is just a heads-down thrill ride. But hey, it’s a record full of surprises and wonder, like ice cream topped with barbed wire, and it’s one of the best things you’ll hear all year. Insert your own ‘think so? I knowso’ joke here; I’d write one myself but I’m too busy putting this on repeat play for the rest of forever. Will Fitzpatrick.