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SOGGY LP (Memorie Relive, France)

I just got finished playing this album and man, let me tell you that I am shaking! And I don't mean shaking like a leaf but more or less trembling 7.0 on the richter scale and it's Japan 1923! Yes, this group, and this album, are that raw and slug-to-the-groin hardrock maniac like being tossed down an empty elevator shaft or getting your finger caught in a slammed car door! Soggy give no mercy and run roughshod all over you to the point where you kinda wonder just how all those petit so-called "heavy metal" groups of the eighties got recording contracts in the first place! And speaking of metal, this is metal kinda like you remembered it from 1971 CREEM magazine suburban slob aesthetics. It's hard to envision this being recorded an entire decade later, a time when it seemed as if heavy metal, for all intent purposes, was dead and buried, replaced by this feathery put-on fluff that come to think of it was zoned in on the downed-out youth of the day!

Anyway, those of you who drooled over my previous Soggy post a short while back have probably already sent off for this 12-inch wonder, but for those of you who haven't in the sage words of Snuffy Smith "Time's a'wastin'!" Only 500 copies of this total obscurity were unleashed and ya better get it asap lest you miss out on yet another high energy brawler that I'm sure'll fit in snugly with your Franco-rock collection next to the Angel Face and Rotomagus recs. Well, I am positive that the more astute of my readers have enough braincells to know enough to pick this crucial album up without being hit over the head more than a dozen times, which is nice to know in an age when the national IQ average seems to be slipping into even deeper chasms as the years roll on.

But man is this Soggy album great on a whole array of planes and traumatic levels. Greater than all of those mid-eighties heavy metal revival platters even, with more of that eternal oomph! that seemed to be lacking in a lotta HM and general hardrock outlets for a longer time than one can imagine. As a frontman, lead singer Beb can't do any better'n be the forever-shakin' emaciated shag of hair that he is with a voice that comes off like a Gallic Ozzy filtered through the dynamic magesticism of Ig. The power-trio backing is equally over-the-proverbial-top, pushing through enough energy to light the entire city of Rheims at night for miles around as they crank through song after song reminding me of what I was hearing back in the eighties when bands like Powertrip were trying vainly to bring back a hard-edged blare in an age of nonexistence.

Fans of the classic early-seventies Stooges, amongst the other heavy metal mongers of the day (that is, if you still think that Iggy was the "Robert Johnson of Heavy Metal" as I once read!) will be pleased. There are hefty Stooge references here from the "Down on the Street" crank of "Lay Down a Lot" not to mention Soggy's own take on "I Wanna Be Your Dog" which actually starts off with a "TV Eye" scream bound to fool more than a few unsuspecting listeners. This discus is such a fine meeting of the Detroit heavy metal proper style and the hard rock that immediately followed to the point where you kinda wonder why is all (even Aerosmith...even THE DICTATORS!!!) didn't fall into the same brand of full-strength soundscapading as Soggy. If you were one of those DENIM DELINQUENT kinda guys who used to mix your Iggy and MC5 in with your Kiss, BOC and the rest of hard rock fandom 1975, then this is the album for you!

And Soggy also display a fine sense of Stoogian O-mindset as is evident in such a song title as "Cellulite is the Top of the Shapeless Body" which has to be one of the finest I've seen at least since "Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell"! Quick, somebody get Hot Scott Fisher a copy!

With this year shaping up to be a pretty hot one if only for the various reissues and other archival digs of past glories (which sure helps considering the lack of current glories to keep our attention spans going) it's sure great to know that SOGGY has arrived to lift our spirits outta that mung that also goes by the name "the present". Let me just reiterate that SOGGY is a foot-long that you (if you are of the high energy over-the-top all-out rock & roll brigade...dunno how many wussies read this blog!) will want to get, and considering just how hard kicks are getting to find these days it's like do you have any choice???