Pigeonholes are something ingrained in the psyche of music writers at large, but when unhinged noise surges through the speakers such as the kind Prolapse has made over the years, well, really, what can one say?
From the first note of Serpico, the opening song from Prolapse’s 1994 debut LP, Pointless Walks to Dismal Places (which still stands as one of the great lost records from the U.K. underground), the Leicester-based band pulled the best bits from punk, rock, twee and experimentalism, and concocted the kind of wicked brew that still tastes like no other.
Yes, there are faint touchpoints, but they are only fleeting. The knife-sharp turns led by vocalists Mick Derrick and Linda Steelyard, like post-punk suffering an incessant panic attack. Frenetic, cranial overload where guitar-based music is at its most deranged, and while the likes of The Fall have been loosely name checked, in truth Prolapse have more in common with fellow maligned U.K. fleapit dwellers, Moonshake, and Dutch juggernauts, The Ex. Not in sound but purely through idea.
With four albums under their belt, a 26-year wait is over as Prolapse return with something that their devoted few will hold close to their hearts: I Wonder When They’re Going to Destroy Your Face. Aptly titled with the cover art to match, I Wonder When They’re Going to Destroy Your Face is an unadulterated, into-the-maelstrom moment where your senses are fried all the way to the nerve endings.
With band members dotted throughout different parts of the U.K. and Europe, for the most part, I Wonder When They’re Going to Destroy Your Face was recorded in Leicester and sees the band seamlessly picking up where they left off. Derrick and Steelyard, at their scintillating best with wonderfully abstract, yin and yang sing-speak passages. The pair’s musings form as a communication that meets in the middle of the same fault line. The frequency, hit flush (led by Ectoplasm United), underlining an unbridled telepathy between the two.
Prolapse - I Wonder When They’re Going to Destroy Your Face Those fault lines are negotiated from the off with The Fall Of Cashline, as Prolapse move along them at break-neck speed. It’s dynamic, metal-on-bone post-punk that matches the ferocity of Headless in a Beat Hotel. Cha Cha Cha 2000 follows in what is split-personality indie-rock that is all flint shards and panache. Flashes and plinks that spark a fever dream where Cat Stevens and Canned Heat are the focal point. It’s like the voice in the back of your mind trying to tie together vague moments of the past.
Err on the Side of Dead sees Prolapse mirroring the energy of current post-punk practitioners, FACS. The sound of shrapnel, whizzing around your ears in what is total abstract mind-fuckery. It’s ramshackle but unlike the hippified connotations such terms bring, Prolapse ruthlessly have you over the barrel.
And at times they do it like never before. Ghost in the Chair, a through line that leads to the horror of one’s most vivid atrocities, as Derrick and Steelyard unveil a tale that could be interpreted in various ways. The protagonist could be talking to a therapist as much as they could be talking to a departed loved one with their imagination warped through the blast zone of grief. It’s the most harrowing song Prolapse has written, and as images burn deep with emotional intensity, it’s one of those haunting moments in art that that leave you in ruins.
The only thing that could pull you out of it is On the Quarter Days. Here, Prolapse flex brute force in what is a searing representation of punk that crashes through the wall that leads to post-rock. It’s music designed for loud volumes. The kind of cerebral discord that makes you feel alive; Derrick’s lyrics, feeling more like something out of William S. Burroughs tale. And Jackdaw is equally thrilling. A three-minute splintered, wall of noise akin to Pere Ubu trying to blow the pins off the door, it’s something you yearn for in a room full of people, as the white noise stifles you into submission.
Which is exactly what I Wonder When They’re Going to Destroy Your Face does. There’s no growing older gracefully only to return for the ‘contemplative’ record that so many of their era churn out. There’s nothing wrong with that but Prolapse aren’t wired that way. It’s about capturing an energy and framing a moment and that moment has never changed. There’s chaos and Prolapse exist to be in the centre of it. I Wonder When They’re Going to Destroy Your Face is that chaos, as Prolapse remain at their diamond-sharp best.
I Wonder When They’re Going To Destroy Your Face is out now via Tapete Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.
