Negative Guest List/Sleek Bott Records 1, Edition of 300 copies - (SOLD OUT)

"This December Australia has the Axemen live experience to look forward to. To celebrate, NGL has partnered w/ Axeman ''Little'' Steve McCabe's Sleek Bott imprint to release this Oz tour 7''. You get a live @ WMFU track on the a-side entitled ''Nutsack'' that stammers w/ a positively fried post-70's hard rock feel, and a B-side called ''Nutshack (Redemption Song)'' that sounds like it's from another planet. Well, I 'spose Christchurch kinda is! 300 copies." - Brendon Annesley/Negative Guest List

Maybe it was the Siltbreeze reissue series, of which Three Virgins is the third and possibly final edition, that triggered the Axemen back into commission. The wizard(s) at Negative Guest List have stepped in to support the band’s recent/did-it-already-happen Australian tour with a two-song 7” par excellence. “Nutsack” and “Nut Shack” are in ways nothing more than exercises to see how many times they can insert the titular word into these songs. Recorded at WFMU on their 2009 American tour, there are more overt attempts at melody here, but the same shambles that powered Three Virgins never went away, and blesses these two tracks with a demented, grinning glee that evaporates once the songs generate their own steam, and you’re left singing “nutsack” to total strangers at inopportune times. You’ll notice I didn’t try to describe what these songs are like any further. What’s the point? They rule. Lawyer up! - Doug Mosurock

This is probably the wrong way to enter the Axemen’s meaty discography (there’s what, at least three double LPs?), but I’ll be damned if that wannabe The Far Side cartoon on the cover isn’t the perfect ice breaker. Is this what these guys usually sound like? I was expecting a noisy jumble of improvised joke-rock, like “Weird” Al sitting in with The Lost Domain, but nah, “Nutsack” is a full-bellied rock n’ groover. The singer sounds like my uncle after he had a stroke (no joke – I really do have an uncle who had a stroke, and he really does sound like that), and it’s pretty much the perfect fit for this laid-back rocker, perhaps a more jovial counterpoint to Endless Boogie. “Nut Shack Redemption Song” delivers the silliness I expected, with some budget keyboards and sock-hop guitar; this music seems intended to embarrass any teenagers in the room. I think the next time Siltbreeze unearths some original Axemen LPs and offers them up on the ‘net, I’ll bite. Can’t have too much of this crap, that’s for sure. - Yellow Green Red