Sunday, February 23, 2025

Surgery - Souleater ep (1989, Glitterhouse)

Realistically, I could have shared this one eons ago, but I just kept putting it off.  If someone else out there in blogland got to Souleater before me, I didn't mean to step on you.  Surgery ended just as the internet was about to go mainstream, so details on this New York by-way-of Syracuse foursome aren't exactly plentiful.  Most of their tenure was spent on the noise-mongering Amphetamine Reptile label, which suited the band, who had their collective tentacles steeped in a combustible grunge/punk aesthetic, with trace elements of the soon to be burgeoning stoner rock movement.  Unruly salvos "Dance" and "Brazier" pack a sumptuous degree of sway alongside righteous heaviness, and alone make Souleater veritable required listening.  Not much in the way of pop sensibilities here, but five years in from this ep, Atlantic Records scooped these fellows up, and by then they had an incorporated an often infectious groove-rock slant, outdoing their more renown, albeit lame-o contemporaries the Chili Peppers...however the mainstream was regrettably oblivious.  Surgery called it a day in early '95 upon the sudden illness and passing of frontman Sean McDonnell.   

01. Dance
02. Brazier
03. Goodtime
04. Stupid Chile'
05. Slap
06. Souleater

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