Album Review: Dick Move – Chop  (1:12 Records)

With the briefest nod to Blitzkreig Bop and Dick Move are off with well-drilled Punk attack riffs and surgical strikes of youthful angst and just general rage and fury.

Femoids Attack. Austin Powers Fem-Bots channeling Year Zero English Punk, Slits, Poly Styrene and a passing nod to Crass.

Lucy Suttor, Lulu Macrae and Luke Boyes are new to performing. Justin Rendall and Harriet Ellis are relative veterans.

Ladies Night sees the girls on a Friday night. Leaving the dishes in the fucking sink. Engaging in hand-to-hand combat as they fight their way to the bar as some dude tries to undo their bra. But then every night is Ladies Night.

Pissing and Stag Dudes. Funniest attack on stupid testosterone-amplified alcohol-fueled dickhead behaviour I have heard in a coon’s age. I was under the delusion that things had changed.

I have seen them once in the flesh. At the Deep Dive Festival mid-winter. When the first lockdown lifted and as if in a dream, we had an underground music sweatfest. The Dicks bring the same energy, chops and humour to their live set. Praise therefore must go to producer Peter Ruddell who has captured this perfectly. From his home studio somewhere on Karangahape Road.

Chop is a bit of mayhem which ends in some blood-curdling screams. Heads gonna roll/Chop chop chop.

Slut/Wife takes aim at a thoroughly despised woman in a foul-mouthed rant. As nasty as the Sex Pistols Bodies and sung with the same uneasy gusto and relish.

This is a smart band. The musicians have worked out the way to take elements of Pop music stripped of all but the intangible power and basically let it loose like amphetamine-spiked shock troops. Surf guitar tones appear on this one and Revue.

Let me see your dick move. It’s a threat. Ramones style industrial strength speed riffs polished and too fast to catch.

Summertime Greys a faux slow opening. Just long enough and then wind it up immediately with speed Rockabilly faster than Billy Zoom from X.

If you can’t differentiate them at first, don’t worry. They will come around again. With 13 songs clocking in at just on eighteen minutes, they would have cycled through twice before you know it.

Last words to them. You don’t get to tell me shit/ You don’t get to tell me anything, Jerk!

Rev Orange Peel