OILY BOYS – Cro Memory Grin

When Sydney’s Oily Boys dropped their long awaited debut LP on Cool Death over the summer we were caught unawares, and quickly fell in love with it. Static Shock is now very pleased to be releasing this across the pond for the uninitiated. Here’s what the Cool Death originally said about this record, as we couldn’t agree more: “Chthonic, catatonic, chronic… Cro Memory Grin is a masterpiece. Thirteen turbocharged tracks indebted to the pleasures and pitfalls of their lives in the modern city of Sydney and to the the first and second waves of international extreme music freaks and loonies: pure fucking aggression. The Oily Boys have graced us with a beast of an album that swells between direct, gripping, tangible hardcore punk and near nauseating psychedelia and throb which at moments feels like either ritual trance or a nervous breakdown. Cro Memory Grin contains near equal measures of tension and release; an exercise in high catharsis. It’s rare that a punk record can give the listener anywhere near the same intoxicating feel of an “everything louder than everything else” live show, but that’s what Oily Boys have done. That lightning in a bottle feeling of excitement, chaotic energy, delirium, presence in a moment and frenzied flight into a mind state both frightening and ecstatic. The stone has been carved, the fire has been lit, and this is it… Cro. Memory. Grin.