Nightstick - "Rock+Roll Weymouth", 2012

In 2012, the Scottish indie label At War With False Noise released an unexpected new Nightstick album. Apparently, the record was originally recorded around 2000 but remained unreleased due to bassist/singer Alex Smith's incarceration for various offenses (including biting a woman's nose) and what has been described as "the apathy of the safe world of big metal labels." The album certainly sounds like it belongs to that era, featuring fully analog production consistent with the band's previous albums, though this time the sound is quite flat and lo-fi; it seems as if the record was not properly mastered, resembling more a muffled rough mix than a finished product. I certainly didn't expect a high-profile production, but it's simply not as good as the previous records, especially "Death to Music," which was arguably the best-sounding album in the band's discography.

The lineup remained unchanged, including dancing clown Padoinka, and the band photo in the CD booklet—with the quartet holding several firearms—is iconic, conveying Nightstick's dangerous yet ironic attitude. The album, titled "Rock+Roll Weymouth" after the band's hometown, unmistakably sounds like Nightstick and even feels like a regression compared to the slightly more accessible predecessor, "Death to Music." It's a mixed bag, functioning more as a collection of unreleased material than a proper full-length album, and it's probably closer to the band's chaotic debut, though more eccentric and less doom-laden.

The album opener, simply titled "Nightstick," is a punk-infused, unusually up-tempo track featuring rumbling bass and shouted vocals, which gradually disintegrate into a lengthy noise/psych interlude that becomes increasingly sludgy, resembling an old radio slowly powering down. Its follow-up, "(Let Your) Freak Flag Fly (featuring Kenny's Cancellation Message)," reveals yet another side of the band, with a groovy, rock-influenced song that showcases southern elements and what appears to be an acoustic, twangy steel guitar paired with extended solos, plus a closing sludgy section featuring a hilarious sample of an answering machine message from a frightened concert promoter. Both songs account for nearly half of the album's running time and plunge the listener straight into the usual weirdness of Nightstick's universe, but the rest of the record feels somewhat thrown together.

The typically bizarre cover versions that Nightstick accustomed us to on records such as "Blotter" and "Ultimatum" are represented here by three instrumental tracks. "Ode to Lord Vader" is a very loose reprise of the "Star Wars"'s Imperial March theme, transformed into a distorted bass rumbling maelstrom of feedback, while "Impressions of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C Sharp Minor" and "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (the theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey") unremarkably fizzle out between electric piano and reverberated guitars, respectively. The folk blues/country guitar interlude of "Lila Claire Blues" showcases Cotie Cowgill's unexpected skills, but it's "The Boot of Discipline" that rounds out the record in a more familiar way, delivering a proper sludgy and groovy track reminiscent of the best "Death to Music" material, with heavily overdriven guitars and bass, as well as a signature extended psychedelic jam session.

Overall, "Rock+Roll Weymouth" feels somewhat inconsistent, with too many filler tracks padding the running time, and it would probably have worked better as an EP. At the same time, the return to a more eclectic style after the more canonical sludge metal of "Death to Music" could be seen as a bold move, though it's not as successful or extreme as "Blotter" or "Ultimatum," partly due to the rather dull production. It's still a praiseworthy recovery of long-lost material that gives us an idea of where the band was headed before its extended break, though it's likely to interest only Nightstick's aficionados.

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