Gay For Johnny Depp - Whatever Doesn't Kill You, Eventually Kills You

Far more interesting than the question of the band’s sexuality is the question of exactly how serious they ask to be taken. You could easily take the view that by ending with a comedy take on ‘Come on Feel the Noize’ (rebranded to, you guessed it, ‘Cum on Feel the Boize’) they have forfeited the right to be seen as much more serious than screamo’s answer to The Darkness.

There’s no doubting their intent to cram as much as possible into each of their new songs as possible: from ‘Suckess’ with its insistent bass driven pulse and howls of “you can’t just shit on us!” to ‘Humility is For People Who Don’t Comprehend Their Own Mortality” with vocalist Marty Leopard switching from clean vocals to impassioned screeches and back again (in a manner reminiscent of recent Dillinger Escape Plan records) Gay for Johnny Depp sound like a band desperate to convey their considerable live energy on record.

One of the first things you notice about the songs here is how quickly the band charge through them: at a shade under 22 mins for 11 tracks this certainly is a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am affair. There’s certainly nothing unusual about hardcore bands releasing short records but Gay for Johnny Depp don’t belong to the po-faced technical-metal inspired speed brigade. There are precious few blast-beats and examples of guitar shredding on Whatever Doesn’t Kill You, the band opting for a much looser sound. In some ways the lack of any longer tracks is disappointing; ‘Fucking isn’t Cheating’, probably the standout song released by the band thus far, clocks in at seven and a half minutes. In this track from 2005’s ‘Blood: The Natural Lubricant’ the band allow things to grow and develop to an anthemic and overwhelming crescendo. It’s a pity that there’s nothing on Whatever Doesn't Kill You to rival this type of ambition.

Whatever the actual sexual proclivities of the band members, the sexual energy on display here goes well beyond categories of gay or straight: “She fucked her! / He fucked us! / They fucked each other! / What a fucking mess!”  gives you a flavour. Whatever Doesn’t Kill You gives the impression of a band attempting to go beyond arbitrary classifications and into a kind of sonic pan-sexuality. However desperate Marty Leopard and the boys are to convince you that they want to get down and dirty though, it’s a fast, urgent but rather brief encounter that they offer and one that may leave you a little unsatisfied. That said, the February 14^th release date makes this the ideal valentines gift (assuming, of course, that the special person in your life has a taste for short and sweet sexually supercharged hardcore).