Oh Sees “Orc” 2017. Castle Face Records. Double colored 12″ vinyl at 45 rpm. Formerly Thee Oh Sees, Orc is the band’s 1,218th record since founder John Dwyer gelled his solo experimental output (beginning in ‘97 as OCS) into a sorta stable group around 2006. (Just kidding, Orc is their 17th release, but still! ridiculously prolific, producing at least one album a year.) Orc has a band name change as well as a line-up shift: Paul Quattrone replaced Ryan Moutinho on drums (who was not Thee Oh Sees original drummer; I think they’ve had at least six so far). I love Allmusic’s description of the album: “About half the record is made up of songs that are a white-hot blast of blown-out guitars, dual drummers bashing the living snot out of their kits, a bassist trying to hold it all together in the middle of a hurricane, and John Dwyer yelping like he just put his hand down on a hot stove. The other half is split between thudding heavy metal that comes complete with proggy organ breakdowns (“Animated Violence”), creepy art rock that showcases Dwyer’s spookiest vocals (“Jettisoned”), tracks that impinge on the synth rock of Dwyer’s Damaged Bug alter ego (“Paranoise”), and two songs that feature long codas with violin (“Keys to the Castle”) and drum (“Raw Optics”) solos. Through it all, Dwyer and crew ride the dynamic shifts between quiet and loud, navigate the madly juxtaposed sections, weirdly complicated hard prog, and mindlessly bashed-out garage rock, and basically keep listeners on their toes as it’s almost impossible to guess what might happen next..”

Joe caught Oh Sees at Turner Hall last month (I was supposed to go but bailed; it was a crazy couple of weeks and the show was sandwiched between a lot of work and other concerts, including Daikaiju and Stiff Little Fingers). He said the show was amazing, packed with a raucous audience with a pit in full swing. (I found one video from the Turner Hall show but whoever posted it unfortunately hasn’t learned portrait vs landscape recording.)