Four items of information that must be included in every godheadSilo review/ interview: 1) There's no guitar, it's just bass and drums! 2) They're really heavy, so they must dig Black Sabbath! 3) They're into old-school BMX biking! 4) They drink like seven cans of Mountain Dew a day!

Like the factoids above, all the words I wanted to use to describe godheadSilo have already been used by others (except for "vomilicious", which I've copyrighted for use only in this review). Comparisons to various death-metal outfits, Melvins, and of course Black Sabbath are de rigeur, but ghS are more akin to Butthole Surfers in spirit; after all, they practically redefine the term "bad craziness" as coined by Hunter S. Thompson. Horribly disfigured heavy metal tracks with titles like "Braincloud" and "Nap Attack" show that ghS does a pretty good job of both parodying and worshipping their musical forefathers.

A little voice in the back of my head, the one that makes me write these reviews, says that godheadSilo actually bears a resemblance to Nirvana circa Bleach. Both albums contain songs with dumb titles ("Bunson Over The Junson" and "Dan vs. Fellow Dan" vs. "Floyd The Barber" and "Mr. Moustache") and lyrics that you could care less about, but the music is pure sludgy aggression. Not to mention the record label the two bands have in common (the inimitable Sub Pop). The only thing that made Nirvana so big was that they had a guitarist. godheadSilo doesn't. And they don't care. They'd kick the shit out of Nirvana and take their lunch money if they were still around.

I haven't listened too closely ghS' former releases so I can't be too sure how Share The Fantasy (their third full-length) compares. A noticeable change is that they've done away with some of their intentionally irritating gimmicks; nowhere on Share The Fantasy will you find the looped vocal sample of "You like to suck big dicks" from the movie Heathers, or a twenty- minute dirge recorded at levels meant to destroy stereo speakers, or a six- minute- long, one- note bass solo, or a Calvin Johnson guest rapping appearance. That said, Share The Fantasy is still the sonic equivalent of a coked-up, feces-slinging rhesus monkey: screaming, pounding, fuzzed-out shitbombs that make me giggle uncontrollably when I listen to them.

"Friend Island" started with exactly seventeen seconds of a muffled orchestra tuning up, then suddenly the blood clot in my brain exploded, and through the blinding white pain all I could make out was a vague semblance of rhythm and incomprensible screaming (well, not really incomprehensible-- I think they were just screaming "Friend Island" repeatedly, but I'm not too sure). The song, which lasts only a minute and a half, ends with a screaming "You Suuuuuck!" If you don't find that at least amusing, you probably don't care that Fantasy includes a cover of Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight." Except for the demonic vocals, it's a pretty faithful rendition.

A closing anecdote: When I first listened to Share The Fantasy, I was hanging out in a college dorm, listening to it on a stereo in one of the common rooms. Within five minutes, a particularly huffy student came up to me and asked me to turn it off because, in her words, "People are trying to study." (This was a Sunday afternoon, by the way.) The moral of the story is this: if you're a college student and you hate the other people in your dorm, buy this album and play it with your stereo turned all the way up. You'll need to buy a new stereo and everyone will hate you for the rest of the year, but that's a small price to pay for revenge.

-Nick Mirov

Sound Clip:
"Relationshit"
MPEG-LayerII
64kpbs.44kHz.
266k.34sec.