Vim Fuego
Fudge Tunnel were one of those rare bands who managed to disconnect themselves from all the bullshit associated with the music business. Forget the posturing and posing, the trendy genre labels, and the commercialism. Fudge Tunnel focused on nothing but the music. The rhythm section looked like a pair of trainspotters, while Alex Newport could easily have been mistaken for a floppy-haired Manchester shoegazer, or an early grunge fan. Nondescript and unremarkable standing in a crowd, get them behind their instruments and the result is anything but unremarkable.
`Creep Diets' is stripped back, bare bones rock, but not the sort of rock you'd ever hear anywhere near a radio station. Fudge Tunnel produced more of a stoner version of hardcore. Imagine Fudge Tunnel are the little brothers of Neurosis or Today Is The Day or Unsane and you won't be far off the mark. The riffs are a wall of noise, almost but not quite droning, and the effect is quite stunning at high volume. Feedback and sloppy guitar noises prevail more than sparse solos, which are nothing more than slightly twisted riffs.
On first listen, it's easy to think something has gone wrong with the production on the album, because the vocals are indistinct and buried deep in the mix. It was done deliberately, so the voice is nothing more than another instrument. The lyrics mean very little anyway.
The rhythm section of Dave Ryley and Adrian Parkin seem to get bored with straight 4/4 rhythms, and mess with timings, add fills, and generally wander around somewhere near the beat, if not exactly on it. It's nothing fancy, but it's effective.
The band mangle Black Sabbath's "Changes" until unrecogniseable, and it comes out the same shade of minimalist grey as the rest of the album. There are no real highlights here to point out here. Neither are there any low points. The entire album is a Ritalin-induced emotional flatline.