Chrome / The Jesus Lizard

Since our blog is named after Chrome's album Half Machine Lip Moves, I decided that I should put Chrome on this blog as soon as possible. Most people don't enjoy Chrome as much as I do because of their weird intros and outros that tend to drag on a bit too long, but I feel that their noisy inros/outros were almost the way that they set themselves apart from their counterparts of the time, and conversely, aligned themselves with fans of the industrial music of the mid-1970's. The beginnings and ends of songs are weird, loud, and layered. Even if you don't enjoy the intros and outros, what lies between the two is well worth the wait.

Half Machine Lip Moves came out in 1979, and to me is their best album. It's got some really good songs on it, and is in my opinion the best work Damon Edge and Helios Creed ever did. The album starts out with screeching guitars; it's full of tightly-wound songs that are very drum-and-guitar-driven. For a good explanation of a weird outro that is heavily layered, listen to "T.V. As Eyes" and try to discern all the sampling. There are sometimes as many as five things layered on top of each other (probably more, but I can usually only pick out that many).

The Jesus Lizard did a medley of two Chrome songs ("T.V. As Eyes" and "Abstract Nympho") off of Half Machine Lip Moves, so I chose those two Chrome songs and the Jesus Lizard song "Chrome" for the post today. "Chrome" shows you the cleaner-engineered version of the two songs without the intros and outros. The song is also a clear definition that Helios Creed's guitar playing influenced Duane Denison a lot.

-Caroline

Chrome - T.V. As Eyes
Chrome - Abstract Nympho
The Jesus Lizard - Chrome