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Buried Treasure: Sleaze and the Love Potion

I thought I had a pretty good grip on what Sleaze were doing. Their 2012 album — the full title of which translates A Glass of What Reminds Me of Lovesick Potions — starts off with some single-voice chanting and then moves into heavy-rock-via-punk grooves, thick bass adding a cool weight to the subsequent tracks. Again, I thought I had a grip. Then they kicked into surf rock, and then they kicked into full-on psychedelic reggae, and well, my alleged grip was gone.

The Taipei-based five-piece more or less throw the stylistic playbook out the window, and in terms of A Glass of What Reminds Me of Lovesick Potions, the results are near-universally awesome. I was given a copy of the record by NYC-based videographer Frank Huang with the caveat that a lot of people he’d passed Sleaze onto hadn’t really gotten where they were coming from. It would be easy to not, since even as they move through a course of heavy rock and hardcore punk, they throw in intricate, sub-math guitars en route to garage metal bombast, varying on an almost part-by-part basis between heavy genres and somehow emerging on the other end of the album’s 40 minutes not only unscathed, but smiling. Bluesy, wah-caked solos abound — there are a few stretches here that are full-on stoner metal, but Sleaze are no more fully adherent to that aesthetic than any other — but more than it’s anything else, principally, this music is exciting. Exciting, adventurous, viciously creative, the longest track — maybe called “A Dream in a Dream in a Dream” — pushing past an eight minutes more diverse than most bands’ entire careers and yet still cohesively flowing from one moment to the next.

And yeah, the reggae. A male/female duet tops Caribbean-style grooving and delay guitar on the title-track, later adding extra percussion and sax to what’s already made for a holy-crap-did-they-just-do-that kind of turn. Most of the songs are short, with eight out of the total 11 under four minutes, so as experimental as the feel is throughout, Sleaze never get too lost in indulging a single idea, instead moving from one to the next with both efficiency and passing ADD-style interest. This results in some of A Glass of What Reminds Me of Lovesick Potions‘ most satisfying bursts, the two-minute “Chair” and subsequent “Delusional Gain Fictional Loss” trading punkish rush against mid-range stonerly fuzz and winding up finding middle-ground between the two in layered early-Iommi leads. The 31-second “Joe” is basically just a riff cycled through a couple times, but even that has a larger purpose in the overarching scope of the album, seeming to resurface later on “Demon World,” suitably transformed.

Tossing in a bit of heavy ’70s blues rock swagger to finish out, Sleaze — whose name also appears as Sleaze ???? — emerge from the album as champions of the changeup. Their sound is so all-over-the-place that A Glass of What Reminds Me of Lovesick Potions can’t help but wind up cohesive for the mere fact that the CD can go front to back without making your player explode. Toss in a gorgeous foldout poster and deliver it all with plenty of we-just-pushed-you-off-a-cliff youthful vigor, and I may have little to no idea what Sleaze are talking about at any point, but I’ve got enough context to realize I’m getting my ass kicked by it. They’re a band I could very easily see making friends among seen-it-all-heard-it-all heads down for experimental heavy, but whatever angle you’re coming from, they’re definitely worth a look.

Sleaze, A Glass of What Reminds Me of Lovesick Potions (2012)

Sleaze on Bandcamp

Sleaze on Thee Facebooks

Sleaze’s Tumblr

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One Response to “Buried Treasure: Sleaze and the Love Potion”

  1. Harvey Mee says:

    mmh, holy ghosty. Quite addictive tunes from far away I understand. Thank you again Obelisk

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