Orc, by The Oh Sees’ is the bands 19th release in 20 years, and its an absolutely evil stunner from front to back, head to toes and everywhere in between, whipping up the same kind of radiant, strange awe that the band’s overdriven catalog has so generously perpetrated on album after wicked album. Orc is immediately manic, and intense on rolling opener “The Static God,” forming a pounding fist of screeching guitars that gives way to a wordless chorus that pogos in stop-start guitar clangs, and continues to shapeshift and waggle in bizarre backroads of experimentation. Liberated somewhat from the jammy tendencies they explored on the likes of Castlemania and Floating Coffin, and venturing further into the loopy explorations of last year’s A Weird Exits, The Oh Sees opt to take cues from any twisted source they so desire, smashing it all into an approximation of a rollicking garage-rock basement party.
