The Last Requests Album Reviews

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The Revenge - Demo (2005)

The Revenge - Demo (2005)

I Ride / Ready for You / In the Mood / I Wanna Be Your Dog

I can already imagine the look on your face: Who in their right minds would record a cover of The Stooges' 1969 proto-punk classic "I Wanna Be Your Dog" in 2005? A few decades ago, every upcoming punk band would include it in their set, but it has remained a cult classic throughout the years, its success hardly limited to that particular community (even roots artists Alejandro Escovedo and Uncle Tupelo covered the song at one point). In some way or other, The Last Requests have remained quite faithful to the nasty attitude of the song, but also to its peculiar sound. Singer Andy's vocals manage to capture the appropriately snarling tone, yet it's the buzzing, grinding, grating guitar sound that really does the trick here. It's not excruciatingly heavy (neither was the original), but it sounds mean, dark and a bit perverse. Not bad at all for a recording that was done in a living room and basement. The good thing is that their own songs are also pretty good, hovering between punk and hard-rock, with occasional hints of primitive rock 'n' roll and boogie. "I Ride," for instance, is your classic driving song: fantasies about driving around in a GTO set to the Dead Kennedys' "Terminal Preppie," but played Motörhead-goes-surfpunk-style: raw, hushed, straightforward. "Ready for You" is easily as interesting: a chugging riff, an acceleration to a trashing second part and a guitarist who seems to play only one extended solo during the song. It's a bit of an awkward track, certainly when they switch from the faster part to the slower one ("where did that come from?"), but there's a promise of violence underneath the gritty layer of fuzz, and if you're capable of maintaining that without reverting to cartoonish posturing, you're okay in my book. "In the Mood," finally, follows a similar formula: heavily treated, "locked in a closet"-vocals, a slow hard-rock riff, a faster section and most strikingly, again a lead guitarist who just keeps soloing and soloing without becoming an annoying narcissist. The music's hardly innovative, but no one expects you to come up with revolutionary ideas if you're fucking around with this format. The good thing, however, is The Last Requests have found their very own style within the genre and while their music doesn't exactly swing, it has a noisy, menacing, almost hypnotizing quality to it that's quite rare for such a young band.