Sullen
Paint the Moon (Thick)
By Jim Keller
Published: August 24th, 2003 | 1:27pm
With Courtney Love's new project still in the works, Jennifer Finch in a punk outfit, and most grunge-era rock gods long gone, what are flannel-wearing, long-haired headbangers to listen to? St. Louis grunge trio Sullen is one option and its record Paint the Moon is as much a time machine to Seattle in the early '90s as the recent electroclash movement's keyboard blips and over-gelled hair is to the '80s.
By feeding its guitars through guitar and bass amps and using huge, thumping drums, Sullen creates a stadium-aesthetic wall of sound that is seemingly impenetrable by even the sharpest of knives. It doesn't stop there, though: the band is comprised of couple Justin Slazinik and Shanna Kiels on guitar/vox and backed by Scott Freeman on drums, all friends who met outside of St. Louis, Missouri (or, as they call it, "Misery") when they were 16. On "All Fall Down," Slazinik and Kiels paint a possible picture of how they got together: "There was a little boy and a little girl / And they had a little wine and they all fall down / There was a little boy and there was a little girl / And they had a little band and they fell in love, oh no!"
If you think the lyrics are inexcusable, the Nirvana-esque string bends, power chords, and Courtney Love-like word elongations (see "Young Devilry," where "fire" becomes "fi-ee-yer" and "out" becomes "a-o-out") won't exactly make you trade in your Dolce & Gabbanas for combat boots.
Issue #35
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