OSEES – A Foul Form

Fair play to John Dwyer – the guy just never lets up. Depending on who you talk to, A Foul Form is either the OSEES 24th or 25th record, a pretty impressive body of work by any standards. By my reckoning, this means that the band have managed to release 1.5 albums a year since they first formed in 2006, and considering this isn’t Dwyer’s only rodeo, you have to wonder when the guy ever gets around to sleeping.

A Foul Form actually lands at the end of a long break for the band. Without counting mixtapes and live albums, Metamorphosed, OSEES previous effort, came out in October 2020, an acceptable period for most other acts, but a lifetime for these guys. But, while the 12 songs on here don’t take you anywhere that you haven’t been before, that doesn’t mean the band are running out of creative steam. Playing around the more primitive end of the rock spectrum, this is the band stripped of any self-indulgence or artifice. Lucky for us, we’ve gotten a firey collection of chugging, fuzzed-out punk songs, most of which feel like they’ve been plucked straight from some lost Germs record. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but as someone who loves this kind of music, let me be the first to say the band have stuck the landing.

But then, that’s to be expected. Basically, y’know how everyone says Donald Glover is a genius because he can effortlessly turn his hand to acting, singing, rapping or comedy writing? Well, John Dwyer is the same thing to psychedelic rock. The guy can do pretty much anything – he just needs to pick a target and his fearsome work rate and talent will get him there. The next OSEES album could be a collection of Polka tracks, and I guarantee it would at least be solid. Honestly, it almost doesn’t feel fair.