As Guerilla Toss sets up their gear in the corner of the warehouse, you try to decipher the messages recently scrawled onto the wall behind the drumset. Maybe all of this showed up a couple years ago, the last time they toured through here. Maybe it was written in the last ten minutes. You remember that girl you met at their last gig who thought they were a local band because they come through town so much, and you were like, “Naw man, Jamaica Plain.” The wall is all like:
“Gay disco will never die”
“<3 KASSIE”
“G-TOSS = Deehoof + The Residents”
“G-TOSS = No-Wave Don Cab”
“G-TOSS = Primus”
“G-TOSS = G-TOSS”
“Am I the breeder?”
After a substantial lineup shift, including the addition of NNA Tapes co-honcho Toby Aronson into their ranks on synthesizers, the quintet bashes back into your brainspace with Smack The Brick, due for a cassette edition this month. Stream the tape in full below, and try not to smile (I dare you) as they plow through improbably intricate song structures pieced together from Arian Shafiee’s atonal bursts of guitar savagery, Pat Kuehn’s frenetic bass mangling both slapped and otherwise, and Peter Negroponte’s eight squid tentacles tumbling around a drumset on the way back to the cowbell. As ever, vocalist Kassie Carlson commands our attention at the epicenter of the spiraling ensemble, squealing, howling, and cooing for her life and for ours. Channeling their conservatory-honed chops into some of the most willfully skewed compositions capable of reaching your eardrums today, Guerilla Toss cackle at the notion of “flying one’s freak flag.” For a while, that flag was hanging upside down at half-mast, spattered in sweat and motor oil. Now it’s in tatters, pasted in threads onto the back of the synthesizers and roped through the hole in the bass drum. Smack the brick.
Guerilla Toss kick off the NOW! That’s What I Call Music Vol. 420 !! European tour this month. Get there and find them. Dates are here.
• Guerilla Toss: https://guerillatoss.bandcamp.com
• NNA Tapes: http://nnatapes.com
• Feeding Tube Records: http://feedingtuberecords.com
More about: Guerilla Toss
