Considering the rampaging opening track ‘Great!’, the wall of guitar chords and the fact that the album’s thirteen tracks clock in at a welcome, if miserly, thirty minutes, you might have to admit that Large Mound owe a gracious curtsy towards those beasts of brevity, The Ramones.
On ‘Your Holiday Sounds Boring’ the vocalist jousts with snarling guitars and wins. ‘I Hate All My Friends’ and ‘Malkmus’ are redolent of ‘60s West Coast American sounds. Elsewhere, Large Mound offer an intriguing brand of metal-punk with echoes of Sebadoh and Black Sabbath. ‘Kid House Work Car Band’ has a metallic edge and those snazzy West Coast voices again. ‘I Can’t Die’ has rhythmic echoes of Talking Heads here and there, but they go totally mad on ‘Troy’ which goes on and on for, oh, about three minutes. ‘Elephant Experiment’ has sumptuous guitars under nicely out-of-tune vocals before it goes a bit ape and then fucks off after 1 minute 28 seconds, while ‘I Got The Blues For You (Honey)’ is a furious thrash that’s almost as long as its title.
The exciting sonic concoction emitting from this Dublin-based band is almost exclusively made from American ingredients, grade A guitar riffs, rifle range drumming, and a fine sense of mischief. It’s all a bit spoiled by the vocals occasionally being a bit low in the mix, as in ‘Nothing To Fear’. Still, Large Mound make the kind of joyful noise that inspires kids to form bands.