The Shrine is streaming their rendition of French rockers Unit’s “Waiting For The War” here, as well as “Rare Breed” here, which is out now via Tankcrimes.
Meticulously melding the hooks and decadence of ’70s rock and glam with the fuck-all vivacity and rebelliousness of ’80s hardcore and skate punk, the self-dubbed “destroyers of rock ‘n’ roll,” worship at the altar of MC5, The Stooges, Black Flag and Annihilation Time without ever replicating them. Waiting For The War serves as the follow-up to the THE SHRINE’s critically fawned-upon Tee Pee Records-released Bless Off full-length, which earned a spot on Spin Magazine’s Top 50 Releases of 2014 list, likening the band to “Black Flag circa between Damaged and My War if they loved life more than they hated it and liked Thin Lizzy/early Van Halen/old Aerosmith/pre-Nazi Ted Nugent as much as they did Sabbath,” furthering that, “this band’s stop-and-start lurching feels too hamburger-fed and healthy to be hardcore, with one of the most proficiently engine-room-like rhythm sections in recent rock memory, and gratifyingly little if any slow-for-slow’s-sake ‘sludge’ dry-rot or fast-for-fast’s-sake ‘mosh’ malarkey.”
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Seeing this release was almost baffling at first sight. After doing some research, I confirmed that yes, this is indeed the same Ghoul that released Splatterthrash and Maniaxe, just to name their two most prolific releases (at least as far as I know. I’m still studying). The innocuous logo that hearkens more towards a sitcom title graphic and the fact that the release is entitled Intermediate Level Hard-Core (Tankcrimes) nearly threw me for a loop, but all I’ll say to rationalise it is consistency’s the work of the devil. They can do whatever they want, as long as they keep it weird.