Product Description The Imbeciles are a post-punk, experimental rock band that grew out of Wartoad a mainstream punk act that formed in 2014 with musicians from LA, London and Texas, and described by The Reprobate magazine as 'an extraordinary experience. Effectively, everything you might want from a rock band is here, defying convention and blitzing the audience into astounded submission.' The turning point for the band came in 2018 during its tour of small venues in Southern California, Texas, and the North of England. Wartoad realized they had more in common with idiosyncratic acts - Wire, Gang of Four, Devo than they did with the mainstream punk scene. The band set themselves an immediate goal: to record an album that sounded like it could have been recorded four decades ago, in 1979, but without in any way being derivative or a 'soundalike.' The result was a new name, a new sound (leaner, louder, and more brutalist), and a new, eponymous album. 15 songs on the themes of paranoia, anger, violence, and betrayal (individual and state-sponsored) recorded all analog, in seven frenetic days at Sonic Ranch on the Texas/Mexico border. Review If Wire were dragged across concrete and then mangled by barbed wire at the Tex-Mex border, the result might be this enigmatic Anglo-American band's debut. Put down on two-inch tape in eight days in a haunted studio in Texas, there's a resonant atmosphere to the recording, as if you can hear the room where it was dug up. 'One Hand Tommy's inbred redneck gasps and synth whirrs recall how freaky the Pixies first sounded, after 'Stalking Boy's spooky, cut-up Stooges drive has been razor-slashed to a stop. 'D.I.E.' is pop music for Kamikazes, all gliding doom. Most songs last two minutes, majoring in mood and compacted information. Chief Imbecile Butch Dante is new to music but grew up amid punk's Bromley contingent, and applies perverted idealism to album sessions conceived as some kind of Apocalypse Now mission rather than a career move. There's rare urgency and true oddness here - 8/10 --Nick Hasted, Classic Rock, April 2020