Chrome: Feel It Like a Scientist

Ryan Reed on July 31, 2014

Nearly 40 years after joining seminal experimental-rock outfit Chrome, Helios Creed is still finding new ways to weird out your eardrums. Feel It Like a Scientist is the band’s first album in over a decade—and fifth since the passing of founding member Damon Edge—and it crams a decade’s worth of sprawling chaos into an hour-long avant-garde spectacle. With his effects-saturated electric guitar and Iggy-on-mushrooms vocal gargle, Creed remains a potent noisemaker, leading a nimble band through their freak-show paces. There’s demented synth-funk (“Lipstick”), blaring cavemanrock (opener “Nephilims”), Stooges-styled hard-punk (“Six”), haunted-house krautrock (“Captain Boson”) and industrial madness (“Big Brats”) all somehow flowing into a singular sonic carnival. Chrome remains an acquired taste, but what a unique taste that continues to be.

Artist: Chrome
Album: Feel It Like a Scientist
Label: King of Spades