Review: Point Detractor - Demo 2014

To begin with, it feels as though the components of Point Detractor were never meant to be together. Distorted guitar that zaps like a grubby thick laser, drums and synths from an adolescent bedroom rave, villainous vocals that wandered in from a nearby small-town rock opera. There is a mutual love of punk, but only a vague language overlap with which to communicate to eachother; Demo 2014 is a rock record for the cramped dance area of a gothic basement cabaret, theatrical and filthy, making it work like an impulsive Vegas marriage ten years down the line. If I were to dance to this record, it’d look lop-sided and horrible.

And yet, by the time I get to “Gloom Of Glum” – which has the hazardous, dramatic grandeur of Iron Maiden, recorded in garish fancy dress – the parts start to feel inseparable. Perhaps I wasn’t looking at it right initially. Each instrument seems to galvanise those around it; the wildly gesticulating wails send the guitar into a panic akin to a loose fire hose, while the drums start to tumble into double time or awkward patches of syncopation. I’m queasy by the closing stages, which isn’t helped by the way the drums are splayed like dropped marbles all over the stereo mix, or the bass that drags at my right ear more than my left. But it’s a pleasant queasiness – the sort of daze I get coming off a Waltzer, verging on drunkenness in my newfound perceptual tilt. Let’s go round again.