Mwg Drwg

“We could go so far as to say that it is the human condition to be grotesque, since the human animal is the one that does not fit in, the freak of nature who has no place in the natural order and is capable of re-combining nature’s products into hideous new forms.”

So reckoned Mark Fisher in ‘The Weird And The Eerie’, which chronicled the means by which the uncanny can enter the everyday. Mwg Drwg, the second album from South Wales psychic seers Obey Cobra, is an album that dwells in exactly this kind of headspace. It’s not only a bracing delivery of heavily-amplified and vituperative intensity, but a richly atmospheric journey to a liminal zone where the otherworldly meets the kitchen sink.

Always a band who’ve sought out new dimensions to explore via their trademark warped post-punk, electronic and industrial influences, Obey Cobra have crafted surreal new shapes on Mwg Drwg. What’s more, the title itself - mostly used as slang for marijuana but translating literally as ‘bad drug’ or ‘bad smoke’ - forms an analogue for an overarching ambience of psychotropic dread that permeates these ten tracks in spectral and captivating fashion.

Reflective of a band operating by nobody’s rules but their own, Obey Cobra here are just as adept with bracing noise as sinister disquiet. Taking influences as diverse as Diane Arbus, David Lynch and Sonic Youth, they balance out heaviosity and grace on the likes of the majestically discordant ‘Ten Of Wands’ and the glacial yet pulverising ‘Blue Hour’. Meanwhile; on the title track, the band excel themselves by sculpting a Jesus Lizard-esque rhythmic pulse, eerie vocal abstraction and the crepuscular downtempo atmosphere of Massive Attack’s ‘Mezzanine’ into a uniquely haunting dreamscape.

Central to the beguiling psychic web weaved here are the vocals of K Wood, whether dispensing eldritch torch songs, surreal spoken word or caustic intensity - the last named on the feverishly abrasive ‘Home Wrecca’, the heaviest track on show here. Yet their elan of approach forms a lodestar for a band whose imagination is only matched by their intensity.

Produced by London’s Wayne Adams, Mwg Drwg is where the weird and eerie are amplified to intimidating proportions. It’s where grotesquely and beauty happily cohabit. It’s the eldritch chill of ‘Ghostwatch’ in which strange dimensions lurk in the suburbs. It’s an aural exorcism of William Friedkin proportions that demands your immediate attention.