Review in the Twin Cities edition of The Onion - by Christopher Bahn
You don't need a guitar. You don't need keyboards. You don't need
any real instruments to make music. Just about any item you can
grab makes an interesting noise when you bang on it. The important
thing is imagination. Savage Aural Hotbed's been manufacturing noise
since 1986*, inspired by both avant-garde industrial bands like
Einstürzende Neubauten and Throbbing Gristle and more traditional
(but no less flamboyant) Taiko drumming of Japan. Less than half
of the instruments used on SAH's fifth disc, The Unified Pounding
Theory, are the usual suspects: Instead of bass guitar or snares,
the band uses plastic barrels, an air hammer, sump pump hoses, and
a tractor muffler. This is industrial music in its most literal
sense, constructed using industrial tools, although the Taiko element
ensures that the sound is never wholly mechanistic. Hotbed's live
show is always a hoot, a theatrically robotic affair often resulting
in flying showers of sparks. On disc, the group might be most
palatable with the album broken up into individual songs on an iPod
shuffle. Magnificent as it often is, it's a very strong flavor, and
you just don't eat an entire jar of wasabi in one sitting.
A.V. Club Rating: A-
* savage note, actually 1988