The Midnight Vein Kill the King Above / The Link cassette
Making music is not a problem for Buffalo madman John Toohill. My dude is never not releasing something! If I had to guess, I’d say the toughest thing for him would be deciding which of his many projects to attribute a song to—SCIENCE MAN, SPIT KINK, BRUTE SPRING, TURQUOISE WINDOW, the HAMILTONES, ALPHA HOPPER, ISMATIC GURU, etc. (I made up one of those, but I doubt he’d have any trouble cranking out something under that name). Anyway, he’s got two tracks for us here as the MIDNIGHT VEIN, his psych-rock outlet. “Kill the King Above” starts out as a stripped-down, acoustic psych number with a vocal melody that calls to mind “Sympathy for the Devil” in no small part due to the Mick-on-Quaaludes performance John gives here. The track slowly builds until it (fittingly) explodes into a Keith Richards-like lead freakout and fades back out. It’s cool enough—kinda reminds me of Goodbye Bread TY SEGALL. The real winner here, though, is “The Link.” It’s six minutes of primitive proto-punk that sounds like “White Light/White Heat” being bashed out on 80 guitars. Every now and then an unruly axe or two will emerge from the fray to absolutely blister your face, while John issues what sound like reprimands to whomever dares underestimate “The Link.” Real good shit!