HUMAN ADULT BAND “Impotent & Filthy” (Abandon Ship Records)

You know those bands with band names where it sounds like they got so tired of trying to think of good names that they ended up picking something bizarrely literal and boring? Like Average White Band and American Music Club and The Music? Well it’s cool that the underground sludge-noise community has a representative of that school of thought with Human Adult Band. I heard a previous tape by them on Bone Tooth Horn a long time ago and it didn’t stick out in my mind at all and I can’t say that this does much either. It’s basically a mild-sounding live set of theirs recorded at a place in Philadelphia called “Th’ Big Pink” that treads from plodding sleepy murk-marches to noisier chant rock exercises. The audio gives the impression the show was basically empty (there’s not much applause between songs, though they do inexplicably bother announcing the title of every song they play) and things never seem to rev up to a higher intensity level, nor do they zone-out into repetitive trance territory. It’s kinda just a mid-energy road to nowhere. I dunno. Live shows are a headache to document properly, maybe that’s the culprit here. Either way I doubt this is the place to start if you want to get into these dudes’ discography.