Ex Models

Right from the get-go, this offering from art rockers Ex Models reestablishes that they are not here to deliver a finely crafted, well-polished piece of work that will tickle the senses and delight the ears. On the contrary, with Chrome Panthers they have decided to deliver a sonic onslaught to shred your inner ear with the audio equivalent of a razor blade. Imagine the Go Team if they had developed a serious addiction to methamphetamines and decided to make a project's worth of material about how much they wanted to assassinate someone and you will get the general gist of the production values at hand here, as well as a reasonable profile of the group's state of mind. Many of the songs rely on long episodes of repetition and tension-building before releasing it all into a series of shrieks and indecipherable howls that come close to replicating the formulas found on earlier records. It may seem like a bunch of dudes getting drunk and rocking out in their parents' basement as they record demos, but the musicianship is complex and top-notch. Clocking in at 27 minutes, it's their longest offering to date and almost perfectly timed; any more and it would have disintegrated into pretentious noise, and any less would leave a feeling of incompleteness. ~ Rob Theakston, All Music Guide