Timmy's Organism - Survival of the Fiendish (2018)

So this is the new album by Timmy Vulgar’s band Timmy’s Organism, so named because it’s a beast. Other Timmy Vulgar records started with gladiator-entrance tympani drums or advice to watch the skies, but Survival of the Fiendish starts with a motor turning over because—as learned from Road Warrior, a movie dissolved into Vulgar’s veins—the only way to live is to live fast! Vulgar (guitar/vocals) made it in six months in spring 2018 with Jeff Giant (bass) and Blake “Bovver” Hill (drums), two guys who’ve been the beating about-to-burst heart of the Organism for about three albums now, including one for Third Man and one for In The Red. “I’ve been on almost every single underground garage punk label there is,” says T.V. proudly, and now he’s the fresh meat on Burger. So maybe you already know this dude and what he can do—maybe you already bought this record. Good job! Your reward is this record. But the rest of you: learn now what it means to be Vulgar. The glitter slime, the giant fake Timmy Vulgar head that Timmy Vulgar wore as a mask over his own actual head, the octopus which Timmy Vulgar also wore on his head—that’s all true. He’s from Detroit, but not like Kiss “Detroit Rock City” Detroit. He’s from the “Panic In Detroit” Detroit, the “Murder City” Detroit—he has a song about that here!—the dope-guns-and-fucking-in-the-street Detroit. More exactly he’s from Hamtramck, where he does the Panic In Hamtramck fest. Ask about it! But he also comes from … not another planet, exactly, although he sure looks like it when he plays. (“I think I was abducted by aliens for a little while there,” he shrugs. Call it a foreign-exchange program!) So how about Iggy’s “Kill City”? Timmy Vulgar’s been to his own Kill City. Crime’s “San Francisco’s Doomed”? The Pagans “Dead End America”? Vulgar’s been there, too—the doomed metropolis, or the go-nowhere street where nobody lives. And the Weirdos “Solitary Confinement”? Testors’ “Madras Prison”? Vulgar busted outta both! He makes his music by instinct and by inspiration, with a relentless sharks-keep-moving work ethic and a bone-deep dedication to making something individual and by sheer force of nature. His intimidating record collection, a global catalog of the aggressively uncategorizable—those are his tools, he says, and maybe his fuels, too. And he uses them to make Timmy Vulgar records. When you hear a Timmy Vulgar record, you will know it’s a Timmy Vulgar record and nobody else’s record. Survival of the Fiendish is an extremely Timmy Vulgar record. Even more Vulgar! It’s as Vulgar as Vulgar gets. Sure, make connections: “Guzzle Gasoline” is like Raw Power-ed freak rock with Misfits charisma and Stones swagger; “God of Comedy” is like Destroy All Monsters on a solo Roky nightmare trip; “Bitter Pill” is like one of those Cleveland 197X tearjerkers—Rocket From The Tombs, Dead Boys, ain’t it fun?—about losing your mind to the bad stuff and “Wall Of Grey” is 2000 A.D. post-apocalypse proto-punk just like Chrome and Mick Farren knew would come true. And closer “Misunderstood,” with a fists-in-the-air glamrock chorus and UFO-heat-ray guitar: “He’s an outcast! She’s an outcast!” Think of it as a happy ending: “An anthem for the boys and girls,” says Vulgar. And think of this record as a real-deal message from the underworld, by a person who couldn’t deliver anything less. It’s been almost twenty years and Timmy Vulgar is still the king of hard-to-make (and harder to fake) rock ‘n’ freak ‘n’ roll made from black light and white heat—too slippery and slimy and searing-hot to the touch to exist anywhere in known space but on a Timmy Vulgar record, like with Timmy’s Organism or Human Eye or Clone Defects or even his first band Epileptix. He’s been covered in bloodstains, killed by death, ripped from the crypt and sent back from the grave. He worked long and hard to get you this music. He went out into the dark and brought back fire. That is what must be done to survive.