White Slug - Cage Paralysis (1992) C30

 

...and we're back at long last. My precious tape deck has been repaired to the highest possible standard for a very reasonable price by the wonderful guys and gals of the Sound Idea hi-fi repair shop of 2615 NW 36th St, San Antonio, TX 78228, although if you're not based in this corner of Texas I don't know how useful that address is likely to be. I guess you could give them a call on 210-433-0728 and ask. Also I've been very kindly supplied with a mammoth stack of sound files for all sorts of goodies from the private collection of Richard of Chainsaw Cassettes, many of which are new to me, so I'll be sharing those over the next few months, excepting one or two which I've noticed have since turned up on Bandcamp courtesy of the original artists; and there will probably be more from my own collection, most of which I've already shared here, but I have a few bits and pieces still to digitise.

Anyway, we kick off with White Slug, whom you may recall from the second Impulse cassette compilation. I just happened to notice this cassette for sale on Discogs so I bought it, and it was an obvious choice for testing out my tape deck when it came back from the repair shop. I still don't really know anything about this lot, aside from what I'm sure you're quite capable of finding out for yourself which is that they were Jason Whittaker and Richard Munn of which the latter seems to have been something to do with Bum Gravy, and Cage Paralysis was issued by the label which released Bum Gravy's Fat Digester 7", much to the endless amusement of whoever was writing the Melody Maker funny pages that year, presumably David Stubbs. Whilst Bum Gravy is indeed an hilarious name for a band, I'm still not sure how I feel about the ribbing dispensed in their general direction week after week, much of which seemed to amount to Ha! Ha! You'll never get anywhere.

 

Well, back to White Slug, it probably won't come as a massive surprise that this dates from 1992 given what else was around. It does that sensory overload thing you get from Godflesh, Swans and others and is accordingly heavy as fuck, yet with a touch of beatbox driven aural assault thrown in resulting in something like a massively more pissed off version of Hula. Side one of my copy came with one channel significantly louder than the other to the point of rendering it unlistenable on headphones, so I've tried to sort that out, although there was a limit to what I could do. It still sounds louder in one ear, but is better than it was, and yet actually sounded worse with the quieter channel brought up to the same volume as the other. Oh well. You shouldn't notice over speakers, and it sounds crushing regardless. Also, there seemed to be one less track on the tape than is listed on the cover, so I've had to take a guess as to what is what, and making an assumption of the first seguing into the second seemed to make the most sense at the time given that the second track is obviously Slavetrade. I don't know.

 

Download the nine or possibly ten tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:

1 - Sidewinder / Silver or Lead
2 - Slavetrade
3 - SS Musick
4 - Nazilover
5 - Inferno
6 - Puppyfat
7 - Caterwaul
8 - Black Eucharist
9 - Don't Laugh

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