THE FATAL FLAWS Scraggled CD-R

THE FATAL FLAWS
Scraggled CD-R 2009
www.myspace.com/thefatalflaws
Picked this up at Les Disques Sonik in Montreal (who carries Mongrel Zine!) by the Fatal Flaws, a 2-piece band from Vermont with Chris Beneke (songwriter, guitar) and Sasha Rodriguez, excellent on the drums. Scraggled offers up a dense gumbo of sixties garage and punk and also lurking in the dark broth is some blues. Overall terrific homespun CD-R contains some light, fun songs like the simple romantic “5 Minutes” and “Pretty People” (“I wanna hurt the pretty people, but first I want to fuck them!”) I like The Fatal Flaws best when they get super tight and serious, like on the instrumentals “Snakebite” and “Cliffhanger”, and with vocals on the mean-spirited “Crippled Man” and “No Face, Nevada”. Maybe some female vocals and/or another male singer would have changed it up a bit more due to the length: 23 originals! If this was stripped down to around 16 songs it would make a killer vinyl LP length release but this is far more than a demo CD to me, it was put together with care. Scraggled has handmade packaging that is a carefully constructed silk screened cardstock cover taped to a folded paper envelope to house the CD-R. Check out The Fatal Flaws playing with Broken Jugs on Mongrel Zine Vol. 3 CD Compilation included with MZ#6 and the Mongrel Zine Vol. 4 CD Compilation with this issue! (Bob Scott)

THIS REVIEW ORIGINALLY RAN IN MONGREL ZINE #7. BUY IT HERE