Electric Eels "Accident / Wreck & Roll" 7"
Side A: Accident
Side B: Wreck & Roll
Another devastating chunk of festering midwest proto punk from the inimitable electric eels, and the second installment in our singles series with these scurrilous sub-creatures of Ohio's rich musical history chucks forth two more cauterizing cuts of whiplash thug rock your thin plane of existence just might not survive without. "Accident" is another Brian McMahon-penned brain-scrambler and features not only the angelic Dave E. on vocals, but also features Brian on vocals as well, coalescing into a tangled mess of treble-stabbing noise that's just as life-reaffirming as it is polarizing. You just don't get threats of sound like this anymore, and the stained path of insanity combined with the ambivalence that comes with being drawn toward something that's so sinister, yet so seductive, is a feeling you really have to dig deep to find. The bonus here (as if you needed a bonus), is the rarely heard Morton/McMahon/Marotta "Wreck And Roll" composition from the 3x10" Those Were Different Times boxed set, which shows their unique ability to create a pop masterpiece inside of a trainwreck, and another reason why the eels are so not-of-this-earth and were too far ahead of their time to even be measured.
As with our first eels 7" single with an exclusive Christopher Ilth illustration/design, we've enlisted sleeve illustrations by Timmy Vulgar, tying this into a circular frame of reference, tribute, and influence encouraged by the band, further cementing their significance for the ages. And as I type this, my sweet, unassuming little cat is sitting next to me (looking much like the grotesque mummified feline on the back cover of the Eyeball of Hell 2LP eels collection released on Scat over ten years ago), and I can tell by the way her ears cautiously fold back as each wave of frighteningly brackish, punishing scrawl flows out of the speakers, it's a reminder that even lowly animals have instincts that can sense impending doom. And in this case, it's clearly an unimagined audio threat most humans might not even recognize, or would flat out avoid, and it takes those lower down the food chain to recognize this intimidating impendence, or does it? The electric eels are like nothing else before or after them, and it's with great honor that we get to work with such important figures of the punk mythos before anyone knew what to call it, so pull that tail out from between your legs and jump all over this before it poisons the rest of the world. – Victimoftime.com
