Band: Part Chimp
Album: I Am Come
Best song: The title track is perfect.
Worst song: It’s only five songs and all are great.
While working earlier this week, I found myself in a Wikipedia loop. You know, one of those things where you look something up on Wikipedia, end up clicking on of the site’s many interesting internal links and just keep clicking. It never ends. Wikipedia is nearly endless in its amount of interesting articles. I am a firm believer in the genius of Wikipedia.
Anyway, I don’t remember how I got to Fucking, Austria, but I did end up there, somehow. Fucking isn’t pronounced the way we, in the English-speaking world, pronounce it, but it’s hilarious nonetheless. Apparently, the street signs were stolen so often that the town — population 104 — had to devise a way to make the signs theft-proof (concrete, welding, that sort of thing). English-speaking tourists would venture to Fucking — 300ish km from Vienna and 120ish from Munich — to have their photos taken with the sign. Often, they would steal the signs.
That’s amazing.
More importantly, what’s awesome about Fucking, Austria is that Germany has some pretty weird town and city names, as well. But, the fucking crazy thing about the German towns is that they have crazy town names… In German. So, instead of having a town called “Fucking” or “Shithole” or something (which German-speakers wouldn’t think to be offensive, assuming they don’t speak English), there are towns in Germany with names such as Faulebutter (Putrid Butter), Plöd (Stupid), Katzenhirn (Cat Brain) and my personal favorite, Affendorf. Affen means “ape.” Dorf means “village.”
Ape Village, Germany. Sign me up.
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Which is so say that Part Chimp should play a show in Affendorf, solely for the band’s name.
Part Chimp is a London group of minor reknown. Signed to Mogwai’s Rock Action label in 2005, the band plays a noise/hardcore hybrid. It’s impressively punishing and strikingly proficiently-played. The band is not without skill. The fury in “Bring Back the Sound” is Stooges-esque and the actual melody in “I Am Come” is pretty cool. “War Machine” has touches of Sabbath, while Dr Horse Pt II is a badass cross between a great doom song and being hit in the head with a dictionary.
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoy it. I Am Come: Approved for Affendorf.
