siLLy puPPy Although the New Jersey band OLD ( also O.L.D. and formerly Old Lady Driver ) only released four albums during its initial run, few bands have radically changed their style as much from album to album. While starting out as a silly grindcore parody band on the debut “Old Lady Drivers” in 1988, the band moved on to a more industrial metal sound on its sophomore release “Lo Flux Tube.” Not content sitting still for too long the third album “The Musical Dimension of Sleastak” took things deep into the world of freaky psychedelic rock and experimental weirdness. Despite the differences on all three albums, the grindcore vocals remained unchanged and although the metal elements varied, still dominated the soundscapes.

For its last act, FORMULA, the band’s fourth and final album, OLD completely shifted gears once again and pretty much abandoned all traces of metal music altogether and instead forged ahead with a unique mix of industrial rock, post-rock and electronica. In addition to these changes the band was whittled down to a mere duo with James Plotkin handing all instruments ( guitars, bass, keyboards, drum programming, tapes, sampler ) and Alan Dubin handling all vocals. This is the only OLD album where Dubin’s grindcore rasps were almost completely abandoned and instead he provided a series of vocal styles processed through a vocoder which will remind the listener a bit of Cynic’s masterful 1993 debut “Focus.”

It’s fair to say that FORMULA sounds like a completely different band with few if any traces of the past to be heard save the psychedelic post-rock style that “The Musical Dimensions of Sleastak” offered. This album has been compared to many of the Ulver albums possibly due to the fact that Norwegian band also began as an extreme metal act and completely shifted gears into the world of electronic experimental music. FORMULA is considered a notable precursor to industrial techno as it expires many hitherto unexplored aspects of techno, IDM and electronic music that took the 90s by storm. Think Auterchre, Boards of Canada and even a less abrasive sounding Skinny Puppy and you’re on the right track.

Having started out as a metal band, OLD was signed by Earache Records and due to the non-metal nature of this one became the label’s worst selling album at the time but also courtesy of the broadening of musical tastes over the ensuing decades, FORMULA has retrospectively been looked up very favorable and even extremely innovative. A very strange album indeed but much more accessible than its predecessor that went for the avant-garde jugular with bizarre psychedelic excursions into the freak zone. FORMULA is more structured, more consistent in style and less freaky overall however the neo-psychedelia and experimental approaches are still abundant in every possible way. The album also exhibits traces of progressive electronic and ambient dub.

While some may claim that there is still metal present on FORMULA, there really isn’t. Sure the bass grooves are crisp and quickly played but fast music does not equate to metal music. This is very much an avant-garde electronic album that happens to have a pronounced guitar presence and a bitchin’ bantering bass presence. There are very few extreme metal vocal styles to be heard ( small bits occur on tracks like “Thug” and “Rig” ). While all vocals prior by Alan Dubin were grindcore to the max, on this one all vocals are primarily clean and processed. Considering OLD was signed to a metal record label it was actually quite bold for them to present this to the label and even more amazing that Earache let them release it! In order for anyone to comprehend this one, you must really divorce yourself from what came before.

Metal purists will raise their fists and scream blasphemy but for those who transcend musical genres this is an excellent display of post-rock infused electronic wizardry. Sure i prefer the band’s second and third albums the best but i cannot deny that FORMULA is an excellent display of avant-garde electronic rock based genius. It’s no wonder James Plotkin is one of those musical maestros who transcends musical genres. He has been instrumental in grindcore, industrial metal, noise music, drone metal, dark ambient, digital hardcore and post-metal working with bands as diverse as Nadja, Sunn O))), ISIS, Pelican and Earth. These OLD albums simply highlight all his talents in their nascency. Personally i love every OLD album and this one is no exception.

siLLy puPPy By the time the band that began as Old Lady Drivers got to its third album THE MUSICAL DIMENSIONS OF SLEASTAK, not only had they abbreviated the moniker to O.L.D. but dropped the punctuation altogether and was simply OLD. Add to that the comedic grindcore of the first two albums had been totally replaced by a bizarre new style of progressive psychedelic space rock. Along for the ride from the second album “Lo Flux Tube” where the industrial elements that ebbed and flowed. Add some post-rock / metal elements to the mix and what OLD dropped was one of the strangest metal albums in the year 1993. In retrospect these albums by OLD would point the way to the more extreme experiments of James Plotkin’s future band Khanate. This album is a bit on the long side at over 66 minutes but nobody could ever accuse OLD of not being adventurous.

For those not in the know, SLEASTAK is a misspelling of the lizard men called the Sleestak from the early 1970s kid’s show “Land of the Lost,” a live action show with animated dinosaurs and other strange creatures narrating the tale of a man and his two kids who canoed down a waterfall and ended up in a prehistorical world only also filled with aliens and magical devices. A bizarre show which seemed to inspire a bizarre album from this trio that consisted of James Plotking (guitars, keyboards, programming), Alan Dubin (vocals) and Herschel Gaer (bass). Everything on THE MUSICAL DIMENSIONS OF SLEASTAK went for the extremely experimental realms with industrial music sounds presented in off-kilter progressive time signatures and freaky electronic sounds oozing out of every nook and cranny of silence.

Like the extra-dimensional reptile race from the 1970s Saturday morning entertainment world, this album is very much like navigating multiple dimensions. Even though the grindcore elements had been completely replaced with a less frenetic style of psychedelic post-metal, Dubin still retained the blood curdling high pitched raspy screams from the grind era. The guitars on the other hand mostly provide the subordinate sounds to keep the album firmly in the metal world but the main gist of the album is to craft freaky psychedelic electronic sounds that often erupt into a cacophonous din of swirling turbulence while the guitar performs some angularity from the outer limits. Like post-rock bands such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, THE MUSICAL DIMENSIONS OF SLEASTAK is a slow drifting kind of album that features an oft monotonous march through time with various jittery elements bursting in and then fluttering out and sometimes changing musical styles completely.

This album is abrasive as hell. Sure the metal guitar is smooth as silk but the album exceeds in crafting an unnerving mix of space freakery with shrill tones and unexpected sonic assaults. I can only presume that the mood setting for this album was to create an air of horror as if one were really stranded in some extra-dimensional prehistoric realm and encountered a group of the Sleestak in their natural habitat. The TV show is available on YouTube for viewing and although a bit cheesy by today’s standards was actually quite innovative as it was crafted by Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame. In many ways this album reminds me of the Japanese band Boredoms would find success in with albums like “Super æ” and “Vision Creation Newsun” except OLD still retained extreme metal aspects which would be dropped altogether on the band’s final release “Formula.”

This is avant-garde metal all the way and utterly uncategorizable as well sounding like nothing else in the metal universe that i’m aware of. Whether this appeals to someone or not will depend entirely on one’s open-mindedness and ability to navigate the interdimensional sonic highway that OLD has constructed on this bizarre psychedelic freak show. This is the kind of mind-warping music that i love the most so i am certainly the target audience although i’ve only come to explore this band in recent years. This album was way ahead of its time as this style of metal mixed with electronica and psychedelic rock wouldn’t become accepted for another two decades or so. All in all i find this one to sound like a metal band that fell into a wormhole and this is the soundtrack to such an interdimensional journey. Personally i love this!

siLLy puPPy The New Jersey band known as Old Lady Drivers started out as a parody band of guitarist James Plotkin’s early grindcore band Regurgitation with its debut release “Old Lady Drivers” but quickly moved on into a much more avant-metal direction with progressive time signatures, industrial metal extras all the while retaining just enough of the grindcore origins laced with humorous overtones. The band’s second album LO FLUX TUBE showcased a much more experimental approach beyond the rather innocent grind origins and displayed the fact that Plotkin was a much more far-reaching and sophisticated composer than early O.L.D. indicated.

LO FLUX TUBE wasn’t a radical departure from the debut but rather a transitional one as the grindcore origins are still in full regalia only augmented by more progressive and psychedelic embellishments. Add to that John Zorn guest stars with his crazy saxophoning to make this a truly bizarre and unconventional grind / industrial experience. To be clear, LO FLUX TUBE is a strange reinvention of what O.L.D. set out on its debut. The grindcore elements are still here in abundance. The heavy guitar distortion, the raspy vocal unrest and the high energy fuck it all attitude of course, however the ambience and compositional fortitude had morphed into more progressive realms.

At this point O.L.D. consisted of Alan Dubin on vocals, James Plotkin on guitars and programming and Jason Everman on bass. The psychedelic cover art pretty much tells you what to expect as long as you are thinking within the paradigm of metal music freakery. In its wake, LO FLUX TUBE incorporates the expected grindcore (of the time) along with industrial metal, death metal and psychedelic rock. IN short, this album is much weirder and wilder than what became before but if extremism is taken to its logical conclusion then why set parameters to what is acceptably wild and what is not? This album still retains a logical procession of extreme “melodies” while adding bizarre embellishments to the established paradigm. LO FLUX TUBE was a necessary step for the following “The Musical Dimensions of Sleastack.”

This album was actually fairly innovative at the time even if nobody was listening. O.L.D. was one of those uncompromising bands ahead of its time and only decades later can some of us comprehend where exactly the mentality was in crafting this mishmash of musical ideas that must’ve seemed alien and unintelligible at the time. This one is for the lovers of extreme metal and progressive rock as well as experimental mindfuck music. Nothing about this will appeal to any totally stuck in any particular box that was designed to control their consciousness. O.L.D. boldly struck out in a fury against any parameters in which they should adhere to. A less in yer face Rage Against The Machine so to speak. Just check out tracks like “Marzuraan” and delve deep into the majestic prowess of this band that excelled in music freak magic.

OMG the intro to “Dissemble” is freaking crazy and totally points to where O.L.D. would take itself on the following album. This near 4-minute song is basically a psychedelic freak out with some grind extravaganzas muffled in the mix. “Z.U.” starts out with electronic production wizardry in the vein of Sweet’s “Fox On The Run” but doesn’t blast into a pop rock hit and instead drifts into a psychedelic fantasy that only stays Earth-bound by a steady bass and drums but becomes a freaky grindy psychedelic freak=fest. Yeah, f.u.cking bizarre avant-metal weirdness thus showcasing the transition between pure grindcore parody and psychedelic grind progressiveness. Basically this suits metalheads in melodic mode while those who have higher aspirations are into mindfuckery. I love this> not a maSterpiece but > f.u.cK yeaH

siLLy puPPy While most grindcore that emerged in the 80s was steeped in gore, horror and bad taste, the New Jersey act O.L.D, short for OLD LADY DRIVERS took a completely different approach with its fast-paced din-fest. This band that featured vocalist Alan Dubin and guitarist James Plotkin who together would go on to spawn the killer avant-metal band Khanate began their career as a comedic grindcore band that was designed to parody the early antics of guitarist James Plotkin’s early grindcore / deathcore band Regurgitation and on this debut simply titled OLD LADY DRIVERS, which also included drummer Ralph Pimentel, delivered those very goods before moving on to become one of metal’s strangest psychedelic avant-artists of the 90s.

While O.L.D. wasn’t the only grindcore parody band on the scene (Sore Throat released its D-beat / core hybrid with humorous overtones debut “Unhindered by Talent in 1988), OLD LADY DRIVERS had a deeper sense of sustainability throughout the decades as old school metal has fallen out of favor and bands that were thinking outside of the box and unhindered by commercial aspirations have finally come of age. In many ways O.L.D. was a typical grindcore band of yore with short lightning fast tracks that exhibited unruly distortion and angry anarchic vocal contributions. This album is nothing like the band’s later efforts and features a rather immature but effective take on grindcore though a completely different lens than gory bands such as Carcass.

In a year when bands like Motley Crue, Cinderella, Poison, Ratt and Metallica were ruling the mainstream metal scene, bands like O.L.D. were stirring shit up in the underground and offering gems for future generations (and those hip enough to get this at the time.) The OLD LADY DRIVERS debut by nature exudes a nonchalant fuck it all attitude about the emerging world of extreme metal with ridiculous song titles such as “Total Hag,” “Lepers With Feet,” “Colostomy Grab-Bag” and “Die In Your Beauty Sleep.” While the main sound of this album is totally in the grindcore genre with lightning fast heavily distorted guitar riffing frenzies, the album does throw out a few curve balls such as the JJ. Cale turned Eric Clapton hit remake of the classic rock track “Cocaine.”

This album features 15 tracks with only one track (“Wisdom Lost”) over 4 minutes and most under 2. Heavily distorted and fucking obnoxious as hell, OLD LADY DRIVERS delivered a competent grindcore album in its own right only irreverent from the getgo with non-grind sounds such as acoustic guitar bits, pop-shlop accouterments and ridiculous subject matter. The result is an interesting but eclipsed debut album only because this band managed to craft some extraordinary psychedelic avant-metal albums that followed. This is by no means a throwaway debut unless extreme metal is not your thing. Comedy comes in many flavors and colors and O.L.D. delivered an unexpected example this far on in an extreme metal subgenre not known for its funny bone.

Ounce for ounce, this debut titled OLD LADY DRIVERS delivers that rare opportunity where lovers of extreme metal and comedy can co-exist side by side for slightly over a half hour’s length. Like most grindcore, the lyrics are unintelligible but even the musical nonchalance and deviations from the norm provide enough comedic departure for the staunchest metalheads out there. Granted this is not this band’s finest moment but for a debut release it’s quite interesting and from a retrospect approach probably even innovative for the year it was released. Energetic and ferocious as any hardcore metal band at the time, this band saw the humor that oozed from such extremism and ran with it. There is also a pre-grunge sound here that places this band in the same ballpark as Green River, The Fluid and Skin Yard but in a more extreme way.

SilentScream213 Not only one of the weirdest Metal albums, but plainly one of the weirdest albums period. Old are one of the fastest changing bands out there, exploring bizarre new frontiers on each release that are vastly different from the prior.

The Musical Dimensions of Sleastak is a nonsensical, Industrial affair between Metal and electronics. The songs are split between extreme metallic rocking and spacey electronic noise, all the while being very experimental in nature. A decent portion of this release is not Rock music at all, rife with science fiction-esque atmospheric noise that is difficult to define.

Wildly inconsistent in the end. Definitely a step down from Lo Flux Tube, although arguably more experimental and genre-busting. Fans of weirdo music will love this, and even those who aren’t may find this one intriguing listen.