LIARS THEY WERE WRONG, SO WE DROWNED ALBUM BLAST FIRST!, MUTE, PLAYGROUND RELEASE: FEBRUARY 23, 2004 REVIEW: APRIL 16, 2004

Recoiling in disgust from the hype that’s surrounded the punk funk wave they were part of, New York’s Liars have made what should be a sure move to scare the fashionistas away: a concept album about witches. It’s not just thematically that “They Were Wrong, So We Drowned” differs from Liars’ debut album “They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top”, though.
If the debut was the sound of funky postpunk exploding all over the place, then this album has replaced a lot of the funk with an ugly, noisy, screeching mayhem that brings Can and early SPK to mind. It sounds more like a mystical ritual than a rock album.
That said, there are at least remotely funky parts here. Single “There’s Always Room on the Broom” is a mutant industrial pop gem that could possibly fill a dance floor drunken on absinth. Superb opening track “Brocken Witch” is groovy in a more gory manner. The almost Beefheartian, jerky drum splashes combine with the chanting of ”blood, blood, blood” to create what could possibly work as dance music only for very nihilistic spastics.
At first listen, the rest of “They Were Wrong, So We Drowned” makes about as much sense as staring at a thousand shards of glass. But give it some time, and the shards will reveal previously unseen patterns, finally gathering to form a stained-glass window portraying heinous acts commited to musical instruments in a dark American forest, the ghosts of a thousand witches overlooking with smiles on their faces.

KRISTOFFER NOHEDEN