Review By Mike Richardson

I hadn’t heard of Psychostick before, and I hadn’t seen the title of the album either, so the comedy stylings came as something of a surprise. The opening track is essentially filler, the equivalent of Slipknot’s arbitrary 30 seconds of noise to open each album.

Track 2 is a pseudo-live piece of crowd interaction, poking a little fun at frontmen all over the metal world. If you saw Metallica’s performance at Glastonbury, it’s kinda like that, only deliberately funny.

With the daft intro’s out of the way Track 3 kicks in and… musically, these guys are actually really good! The song’s similar to Otep’s ‘Smash the Control Machine’ and the lyrics concern the facile and banal world of social media. “I just wanna punch you in the face… BOOK!” Taking in ‘The Beautiful People’ and references to pop culture and Napoleon XIV on the way.

Track 4 is well crafted and the music somehow suits the ludicrous lyrics perfectly. Track 5 is a conversational intro reminiscent of Tenacious D, that leads into ‘Hate Times 8’.

Parts of this album are daft, silly and childish. ‘Hate Times 8’ is a pitch perfect deconstruction of an entire decades worth of heavy metal. It’s like a self aware Monty Python re-recording the work of 5 Finger Death Punch, and it demonstrates that Psychostick also REALLY know their stuff. The fun being poked at the Metal genre here comes from a very knowledgeable and respectful place.

‘It’s Just a Movie, Stupid’ is musically adept, clever and hilarious. As is the subsequent track where references to conspiracy theories abound.

Obviously, where humour is concerned ‘your mileage may vary’ and personally, after track 9s gentle poke at Psychostick’s own fans, Tracks 10 and 11 fall a little flat comedically. The music is good, but the humour wasn’t there for me, songs about farting weren’t funny 25 years ago when the Descendents did it, they still aren’t. The final tracks pull it back though, the music is good quality, the vocals are funny and delivered well, and a superb homage/parody of Drowning Pool’s ‘Bodies’ ends the album before a track of out-takes take you ‘behind the scenes’.

Comedy and music is a difficult balance to pull off, too often one suffers at the mercy of the other, or the humour is one dimensional and loses it’s appeal quickly. Psychostick are genuinely funny, and genuinely talented. A great album. 8/10

Standout Track: ‘Hate Times 8’
Check ‘em out if you like: Tenacious D, Bloodhound Gang, Descendents.

1 – Premature Intoxication

2 – Welcome to the Show

3 – Sadface 🙁

4 – Because Boobs

5 – Intervention for a Good Mood

6 – Hate Times 8

7 – It’s Just a Movie, Stupid

8 – Political Bum

9 – That Guy

10 – Six Pounds of Terror

11 – Methane Crescendo

12 – My Clingy Girlfriend

13 – The Root of all Evil

14 – Numbers (I Can Only Count to Four)

15 – Duh, of Course we did Outtakes!

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