New Wave for the New Week #65

Cross the murky, swampy rumble of The Birthday Party with the mutant demi-blues of The Gun Club, add a dash of Henry Rollins' most sinister vocal delivery, a smidgen of Captain Beefheart's most outlandish tendencies, and sprinkle it with twangy surf guitar, and what you would come up with is something that sounds very much like Manchester's Inca Babies.

In the course of their sadly brief (1983 - 1987) existence, Inca Babies delivered four remarkable albums and a handful of equally striking singles ranging from stomping, shrieking aural assaults to unsettling pressure cookers that threaten to explode at any moment, but don't always deliver on that expectation. Theirs was not a happy-go-lucky sound, but neither was it melancholy. It was menacing, threatening, confrontational, yet compelling.

Singles like "The Judge" and "Splatter Ballistics Cop" churned along daring the phonograph needle to hang on for the ride; album tracks like "Plenty More Mutants" were more seductive, throbbing, slow boils that hinted at the danger you might find around every corner if you had guts enough to stick around.

This week's NW4NW entry is of the latter style. The title track from 1987's Opium Den is one of the Inca Babies finest moments. I was thrilled to stumble across this clip quite by accident - I had no idea it even existed before finding it a week or so ago. It has caused the album to receive multiple plays around my household in recent days, and I am happy now to share it with you. Enjoy!