Gunslingers

"Twelve years after this French trio's last LP (the mind-ripping Manifesto Zero), guitarist Gregory (GR) Raimo, bassist Matthieu Canaguier and drummer Antoine Hadjioannou have released an album of material recorded back in 2012 (from the sessions as the Massacre-Rock Deviant Inquisitors EP). And it is another wild brew of destructo rock madness played with a timeless ferocity that lends it the sort of proto-punk MASS that defies its actual date of creation. GR has released other nutsloid records in the interim - The GR Record Head (Cardinal Fuzz) and the mysterious Electric Rockin' Chair LP by Hôpital De La Conception - but there's a special, uniquely strange grit to the way the Gunslingers put together their material. Parts of Supreme Asphalt Doser have a tightly wound dynamism that makes me imagine what the Groundhogs might've sounded like if they'd been founded by three speed freaks in Detroit in 1974. It's like the most insane power choogling you've ever heard. One spin of the first side would have sent Lester Bangs straight to hog heaven. The flip is equally messed-up, but with more experimental detailing. The component pieces are still, thick raw slabs of blood-rock, but they're assembled in a way that is pure freakery. 'Be-Bop-A-Lula-Louie-Loua' is like something Rudolph Grey and Von LMO might have come up with if they'd had a sense of humor back in the Red Transistor days. And the collage piece, 'Rebop From Arthur Lipsett's Fluxes,' is a great collision between avant-garde techniques and the band's Brutalist tendencies. I doubt here will ever be another combo quite like the Gunslingers, so everyone should thank their lucky goddamn stars this archival treasure was pulled out of the darkness. It is indeed the Supreme Asphalt Doser. I don't think any other Asphalt Doser even gets close." - Byron Coley, 2022