Chrome - Feel It Like a Scientist

Chrome
Feel It Like a Scientist
5 August 2014
King of Spades

3.5 stars out of 5

Since founder Damon Edge died in 1995, Chrome has been led by Helios Creed, who had joined the band for their second album, the classic Alien Soundtracks, in 1977. Feel It Like a Scientist is the first new Chrome album since 2002's Angel of the Clouds, and Creed's first work since his Galactic Octopi LP of 2011. Having brought his rhythm section (Lux Vibratus on bass, Aleph Kali/Omega on drums) from his last solo album to the new Chrome material, Creed's new version of Chrome is more or less a continuation of his solo career (and vice versa, as Kali/Omega has played with both Chrome and Creed solo since 1997), which isn't exactly a bad thing.

This being a Chrome record, it's full of DYI proto-punk, proto-industrial insanity. Creed and his crew experiment with reckless abandon, though always while keeping a firm footing on the holy land known as Rock 'n' Roll. If there's any stylistic touchstone here, it's that Chrome don't give a flying fornication about style. There's no self-conscious posturing or calculated image construction going on here, there's only the unbridled madness that could produce tracks like “Brady the Chickenboy,” and fucking mean it, man. At times echoing the bands who echoed them, such as Butthole Surfers or Scratch Acid, Chrome appear to have opened a time tunnel between 1977 and 2014 and let everything flow back and forth. They get better home recording quality and iPhones; we get a reinvigorated experimental spirit and the AMC Gremlin.

Feel It Like a Scientist, as a successful recapturing of the spirit of the band's glory days in the late '70s, serves as a good contemporary introduction to those who are experiencing the unhinged majesty that is Chrome for the first time in 2014. That said, while it might approach those early victories in spirit, it isn't a substitute for Alien Soundtracks, Half Machine Lip Moves, or 3^rd from the Sun. Despite this, as a first album in twelve years, it doesn't disappoint.

reviewed by Richard Krueger