Flummox - Selcouth

FLUMMOX - SELCOUTH

I had been struggling to find the correct adjectives to adequately describe Murfreesboro, TN 4-piece Flummox until I looked at some of the tags on the bottom of their Bandcamp page; "avante-garde doom metal funk heavy rock" - and it hit me, that was it. You couldn't describe them in a more accurate manner, with the exception of a nod to Monty Python. It might take a bit to roll off the tongue but so does their music and that's what makes them so god damn memorable. Flummox doesn’t give a shit about what you think music is, they’re making some noise that doesn’t follow anyone’s rules, probably not even their own and they don’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. These four dudes have a sound that is distinctly their own, which in today’s world is continuously harder to come by - Such is the burden of all heavy music, it carries the weight of not being accessible to all ears, you’ve been warned.

 Flummox kicks off their most recent full length, Selcouth with a 12 minute and thirty second long absolute stoner-drone banger that would easily compliment the riffs of The Sword or Iowa's psychedelic masterpiece, Radio Moscow. The albums second track, "A National Selection" keeps the same general groovy stoner feel but that all gets completely obliterated by what's on the horizon. Appropriately named "Tongue Saw," the third song on the album is where the screws start to come loose - this is where I really felt like I was time travelling. I experienced myself being mentally dragged back to middle school, when super-lanky-12-year-old me used to steal my older sister's copy of Mr. Bungle's self-titled album - I had never witnessed such pure chaos through music and yet somehow a neck-breaking groove kept my head nodding throughout the whole record. I felt the same way as soon as “Tongue Saw” tore through my headphones - the only thing it was missing was freaky carnival background noise. When the Pink-Panther-remnant melody kicks off "The Ghost of Ronnie Dio," the full-on ascent to weirdness had been achieved and they aren't coming down any time soon. The tune quickly turned dreary yet managed to break into a drone-filled double-bass groove that gave-way to a stadium-era guitar solo that even Dave Murray would give a nod of approval to. Up-beat-oddness continued to escalate with "Hummingbird Anthem" clocking in just shy of six minutes telling the tale of some psychedelic, bird-smoking, hallucinatory adventures into the woods, which we all know are the best kind of psychedelic adventures.

            All this weirdness is accentuated in their live show, where drummer Alan Pfeifer dawns an oversized Donald Duck hat, bassist and lead vocalist Blake Dellinger rocks a checkerboard romper. The groups two guitarists, Justin "Squonk" Smith and Drew Jones, both supply back-up vocals which are accented by silver sparkle leggings & an un-buttoned brightly colored-Hawaiian shirt, respectively. Dellinger likes to get the crowd involved by asking the important questions in life like whether water balloons are superior to water guns and not surprisingly, their social media presence is equally as eye-catching (watch the Bubble Beard video). I was happy to see that they’ve shared the stage with fellow-Tennessee oddballs, Tennessee Scum, check’em out if you don’t know them, you can thank me later.

            Kicking off the latter half of the group’s sophomore long-player, “Nazgul Ashes” brings you to classical guitar-bliss, another unexpected turn after the unhinged madness of the first 5 tracks. If they ever make a video for this short interlude I picture it consisting of guitarist Drew Jones on a noble white horse, coming to the aid of damsel-in-distress Dellinger, together forming a band of modern day metal-weirdo-prog-knights, dawning strange patterned leggings and saving the world from the forces of Normalcy, keeping metal awesome by defeating the army of zombified Hot Topic goons...but maybe that’s just me.

            “Depression Heap” brings the album full circle with stoner-grooves to be welcomed by any fan of Sweden’s metal quartet treasure, Witchcraft, only to be launched into an energizing bass-driven fuzz-factory bridge before being transitioned to Holy Grail-esque vocal breaks and down-tempo goodness. About halfway through “Pan’s Daughter,” the group gives a more direct nod to their classic metal roots, taking another turn into the tremolo picking, hi-gain guitar solos, and double-bass of giants like Slayer and Metallica. Only to be ended by what sounds like a recorder blaring high-pitched whistles over feedback and thundering toms - yes you read right, a recorder, that instrument that everyone had to learn in elementary school for some unknown reason.

            The last two songs clock in at just less than 21 minutes, collectively longer than the previous 4 songs combined. “Flight Through the Cosmos Unibirth” seems to cumulate all the weirdness and varied genres of the first 8 songs of Selcouth and combine them all into a 12-minute galaxy-spanning riff-slinging palace of wonder with time travel references that echo in and out of ever changing realms. The album concludes with the same absolutely ridiculous energy that spanned this entire collection of songs. “Bark, Paddle, & Ball” is a 9 minute doo-wop centered tale of cactus strap-on struggles that any intergalactic heart-broken traveler would encounter. Eventually embarking down a rather dark rabbit-hole that includes a tangent covering all the bases of amputation, Wal-Mart, and other forms of torture that is not for the faint of heart. If you’ve made it through the entire album to this point, you’d know that to expect anything is to truly underestimate this group. If you’re searching for something truly out of the ordinary that’s just weird and catchy enough to keep you hooked for the entire album, look no further than Selcouth.

-Steve Olson