O.L.D. — Lo Flux Tube (review)

Album · 1991 · Industrial Metal

4/5 · 2022-07-19
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