Castrati – ‘Let the Cat out of the [plastic] bag’ CD review
I’ll buy a little cat
I’ll call “Pugsley”
it will be my new friend
(“Nothing”)
A one can ask the question: “What’s happening with the French deathrock scene now, when “Make-ups” are split, Deadchovsky is buried…”. Really, what can happen in the country where the mysterious alko-prophet Igor told his prophesies? For example, it’s quite logical to surmise that if a cat from another planet falls on Earth, it will land exactly in France. So did Pugsley, the purple cat from Venus and the great inspirer of “Castrati”, whose debut mini CD, recorded in 2007, is finally out, thanks to Alone Prod.
Actually, this release proves not only that the French scene is alive, but that deathrock itself still has its ways of development. Castrati took the best from deathrock bands of all the three decades of its actual existence – a bit glammish and decadent attitude of “Christian Death”, weirdness of “Cinema Strange” and “schizoidness“ of “Deadchovsky” (as well as the idea of own legend), adding punky “nothing to loose” aspect and very specific sense of humour. The CD has only one surface minus – it lasts just 26 minutes. All the seven EP’s songs have the band’s style basis, but also their very own things alongside with it. The music is fluid and rough at the same time, every instrument has it’s own voice, sometimes, accenting, sometimes, “flirting”, as it can better be heard in the keyboard line of “He’s Vicious”. It all can be noticed very clearly in the accented intros (which are usually keyboard), and less fixed in main parts of songs. Önuk’s vocals are weirdly murmuring with “stratification” of words on each other. But the best and the most “Castrati” feature is the combination of two people’s vocals in the conversation way, as it is in “Don’t hit my cat” and “Where’s Pugsley?”. It makes a listener being a kind of spectator of a deathrock play, which can be performed in his imagination while listening to these songs. Lyrically, Castrati enters a listener to their own universe with weird characters like the depressive alcoholic Mr. Quidja, who’s looking for the meaning of life and the mysterious cat Pugsley, who partly gets some features of the web porn star Liz Vicious by the word-game in the song “He’s Vicious”. Lyrics also reflects ridiculous situations, like the parallel with the real case of cat’s death in microwave oven in “Where’s Pugsley?”.
“Let the Cat out of the [plastic] bag” clearly tells to a listener that there’s no use in trying to find any conception, all the beginnings lead to nowhere, giving the opportunity to a listener to finish them in his imagination. So let’s draw a conclusion, what the band is, according to this mini CD, and try to imagine, what will happen with the band in the future….
Pall ‘Nattsol’ Zarutskiy
‘Grave Jibes Fanzine’
