BABYCUM

Caterpillarmen are an Icelandic band who I have only recently heard. It must have been a suggestion on the PA forums that made me write down a note with the band's name and 'bandcamp' next to it. (I come across notes I made like that all the time). So recently I watched some YouTube vids and found the band to be as wacky and crazy as I expected them to be. Both good things, btw. So I decided to check out one of their albums on Bandcamp. The album I listened to was this one, Babycum. I had a feeling that this album had not been added yet. My intuition turned out to be right, so I added the album myself.

Okay, let's talk about that title...ugh. There's a song here called "Penetration Baby" and another called "In My Baby". All these provocative titles remind me of the name of the first Residents EP, Baby Sex. These guys are extremely goofy and their titles should be taken tongue-in-cheek. Welcome to the wacky world of avant-prog folks! These guys are a quartet of the guitar / bass / drums / keyboards variety. The keyboard and guitar playing really stands out. Generally the music is rockin' with diverse influences.

The album starts with "Siggi" which is some kind of math rock/circus music hybrid. "Kalli" begins as avant symphonic prog. Love the organ here. The tempo keeps increasing at one point. Just single notes for awhile, with a big gap between each one. Then vocals with a laid-back ballad style of musical backing. Then that section starts to increase in tempo and gets louder. At the end is an interesting sound effect; it sounds like something spinning really fast on guitar strings. "Penetration Baby" starts out as a stereotypical blues number. Then it goes into a bluesy reggae groove. Later changes to a kind of math rock boogie. Ends as some sort of avant symphonic math rock.

"Pop (like a balloon)" is a bluesy stoner rock type song. The cliche "baby, baby, baby" here just works perfectly. I love these guys sense of humour. At one point the music stops and somebody yells some naughty words. I don't have the right computer program to make the following letters look correct (so any Scandinavians reading this forgive me), so... "Dodludans" starts out in stoner rock style with some goofy sounding synth. The synth playing turns into a great solo later. Goes into symph prog style with great organ. The music fades out and then you hear that spinning sound effect again, but it gets slowed down at the very end of the song.

The 15 1/2 minute closer "?" opens with jazzy electric piano and stereotypical blues singing doing gibberish. Lots of start/stop playing at the beginning before it goes into a rockin' groove, with some lovely electric piano interrupting it here and there. Vocals during this part. Gets mellow and spacey for awhile. Love the distorted electric piano at one point. Starts rocking out by going up and down the scales before changing to ELP style symph prog. Then switches to dissonant avant-rock. Later vocals in a harder-edged prog style. The music stops near the end then some minimal organ playing and random sounds. Rockin' symph prog to end it.

I really enjoyed this album and want to hear their other albums. It's hard to say who to recommend this to but fans of humourous avant-prog should enjoy it. If you like your avant- prog rocking and guitar-oriented, that's a bonus. It's nice to know there are new bands out there who are trying to make their own sound. I give this a 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars.