Hi, everyone. 2thony Hottano here, the internet's most disgusting music nerd. It's time for a review of the new Tropical Fuck Storm album, Fairyland Codex.

Here we have the fourth full-length LP from Australian experimental art punkers Tropical Fuck Storm. It is their follow-up to the 2021 album Deep States, which was not a bad record, but pretty easily my least favorite in the band's catalog so far. But you know what? Who was coming out with their best stuff during the pandemic era? Some were, but not many.

Either way, ever since the band burst onto the scene in the late 2010s, rising out of the ashes of legendary bands such as Drones and High Tension and Palm Springs, they've always delivered a uniquely chaotic noisy, art punk style, paired with songs that reflect our modern day dystopia pretty accurately.

They came really bold out of the gate with their debut album, A Laughing Death in Meatspace, a record which, going back to it, it really does sound like a post-industrial psych punk horror. I feel like I'm listening to the world melting with that album.

Interestingly, this new LP over here hits us with a bit of cover art that seems to call back to that record. So I went into this one wondering what Tropical Fuck Storm is going to do here. Go back to their roots, repeat themselves, or forge new ground? I mean, their sound typically comes across pretty challenging a lot of the time. And again, experimental. They don't exactly seem like the group that's eager to repeat themselves. And I will say the first track on the record, "Irukandji Syndrome", in a lot of ways, is pretty standard Tropical Fuck Storm.

You've got this twisted, warped, sinister brand of art rock with an edgy punky flair. Snide talk-sung vocals from Gareth Liddiard, backed up with this firestorm of bright and fire three vocal harmonies from Fiona Kitschin as well as Erica Dunn. It's a rollercoaster of a jam with an intensely noisy crescendo.

So yeah, the track does bring a lot of familiar grooves and sounds if you've heard the band's previous stuff. However, I do I think quality-wise, it can go toe to toe with some of the best tracks off the band's first two records. So I'm not exactly complaining.

And then from here, I was surprised to find that the rest of the album actually becomes Tropical Fuck Storm's most despondent, most tortured, really darkest album yet.

And going in this direction has resulted in tracks that are sometimes harrowing, sometimes profoundly sad, and even sometimes beautiful. The song "Goon Show", which was a single to this album, is like a long, patient march into oblivion, really one of the band's most foreboding songs yet, with an absolutely demented guitar solo that is just truly beyond words. And while this track and many others on the record do have a very slow burn progression to them, there's always a big, epic, and sometimes dark payoff to make the weight worth it. I also love how prominent Fiona and Erica's vocal harmonies are getting on a track like this, are really making the chorus snap.

After this, though, we have "Stepping on a Rake", which is not quite as much geared toward the state of the world. It's more of a sad-ass love song, although I hesitate to just call it a love song. I mean, in some ways, it is about as heartening as I think a TFS song can get. It's got an oddly beautiful ending, and there are parts of the lyrics that read as genuinely sentimental. But then there are other passages that just read as desperately devoted. It's an emotionally complex song for sure. One that, even though I don't know where exactly to land on, it still feels like a gut punch emotionally when I'm listening to it in the moment.

Moving on, while Gareth has done the lion's share of the singing up until this point on the album and in the singing on a majority of the band's records, going deeper into the LP on the next track, the band does more to share in the vocal duties with Fiona and Erica really taking center stage here. The end result is a track that sounds like if Sleater-Kinney was going for, I don't know, a song that was maybe slightly inspired by Pink Floyd's "The Wall part 2". Not only in terms of the grooves and the basslines at the song's spine, but also a lot of the social commentary going on in the lyrics, as we do seemingly have some bars here that seem to take it to the rich bastards that run society or at the very least, are very well to do or materialistic. There's also a rocking ending on this track with just these desperately shouted screamed refrains of "Can you recover!?" that really makes the song stick emotionally.

The title track takes an interesting turn after this. It is surprisingly going in an acoustic direction, but the band still manages to make their trademark off-kilter sound and dejected energy translate with the occasional folk freak out moment here and there that sounds almost inspired by Romani music. There's also this incredible transition instrumentally around the midpoint of the song that brings the whole thing toward this grand, again, almost progressive build. The prog rock influences on this thing are real, and the band does a great job of justifying every second of this track's 8+ minute run time.

After this, we have "Dunning Kruger's Loser Cruiser", which is not just an incredible title, but this track is like an absurd noise psych freak out with loads of intentionally messy segues and transitions and vocals. In terms of presentation, it's really the band's most slovenly performance in recording yet. It's hilarious to me how many different parts of this song that there are, and yet none of them connect smoothly, and they don't sound like they come together all that well cohesively from a musical standpoint. There's also an instrumental bridge on this thing that is pure insanity.

I mean, this track to me, still ends up pretty catchy by Tropical Fuck Storm standards, but it seems like they went into it trying to challenge themselves. Can we come up with a song that has several different operating parts and make them sound as disjointed as possible? I'm also appreciating deeply the lyrics on this track that are all about having a private life, sharing too much, or the worries of surveillance.

"Bloodsport" is a pretty rocking number on the back end of the tracklist, which I think was a necessary add. It just breaks up the flow of the tracklist a bit. Fiona and Erica smash it vocally on this one once again.

Then the final moments of the LP, I feel like I can only describe as chilling. "Joe Meek Will Inherit the Earth" is another wonderful slow burner. With "Bye Bye Snake Eyes", the band manages to pull together really their prettiest song ever. The closing track features one of the hardest contrasts on the entire LP. You really have Gareth digging into the most somber vocal performance on the entire record. Then the way that transitions into the shouts and refrains of "murderers! murderers!" is just absolutely insane and quite disturbing.

I mean, overall, I did love this record, but in some respects, I am a little torn on it because I feel like I would have liked to have had maybe a bit more time with it and listens to it. I'm not exactly sure what I would get out of doing so outside of maybe some more accurate disparate descriptions of some of the sonic details of the closing tracks on the record, which, believe me, are instrumentally very impressive despite how all over the place and noisy they are. I really respect this band's devotion and just the way that they nail this sound and vibe of a controlled chaos.

On this record, better than any of their other LPs, they're able to effectively balance that with a lot of musical ideas and sentiments that are quite emotional and beautiful. Whereas previously, Tropical Fuck Storm's best moments in their back catalog are more, I would say, guided by a viscera and an aggression, a more explosive type of chaos.

So I do say, yes, I would have maybe liked a little bit more time to digest this thing because it is so tangled. It is so wild of an album. But simultaneously, I didn't really have that time because the more I listened to this record, and I was enjoying it for sure, but the more I listened to it, the more this just ugly, horrid, dark, thunderstorm cloud was building over my brain and legitimately making me depressed. At one point, I just had to pull out because I was like, You know what? I'm liking what I'm hearing. It's very entertaining. It's very interesting. I think it is either their best crop of songs yet, or at the very least, the best crop of songs since their debut album. But the record and its material and its performances are so goddamn hitting like a giant ton of bricks being dropped on my head that it is severely damaging my emotional state at the moment, and I need to really put it down I can probably come back to it at another point to get a bit more out of it.

Yeah, I was a little skeptical and on the fence with some of the singles leading into this record, but I would say for the most part, that's because the songs on this album truly are are growers. They truly are slow burners. Outside of maybe the intro and one or two other songs, they're not really going to hit with you, I think, on the first listen immediately. These tracks, you've really got to let the flames that they are built off of engulf your soul. But don't let it happen too much because you don't want to burn the whole damn house down, I guess.

But yeah, I'm going to maybe leave that there and say: very great record from Tropical Fuck Storm. I'm feeling a strong 8 to a light 9 on this one.

Anthony Fantano, Tropical Fuck Storm, Forever.