Shooting At Unarmed Men - Triptych (Too Pure)

Ex-Mclusky bassist Jon Chapple had meanwhile already headed for Australia in 2006 and had apparently put the increasingly promising Shooting At Unarmed Men on hold for the foreseeable future.

Here we are then facing another Shooting At Unarmed Men album and wondering whether it will be another slightly hit and miss affair. At least the promo doesn't come as three separate EPs as the finished article will. Being intensely lazy, it is often too much to get up and turn a 12" over, let alone swap a CD a couple of times to get the effect of an album.

Still, you have to salute the idea itself as inspired (if not a little silly), but then you couldn't really expect much more from a man who used appear on stage painted silver with masking tape over his nipples.

Triptych is Chapple's first album with the Australian version of SAUM, not that you would know it as the overall sound is fairly similar to the two albums that preceded it. If anything, this is actually their best work so far. It is certainly the most consistent and least patchy album by far.

Opening with Sometimes The Best Thing You Can Do Is Die, Triptych finds SAUM exploring similar ground to Nirvana on In Utero. It is a dirty slice of punk rock, with an undoubted pop heart beating in its chest (which sounds like it might be clogged with the tar of far too many cigarettes). Chapple is in fine voice as always, shouting, screaming and sneering his way through the tracks, calling to mind any number of similarities (Helmet, Discharge, the aforementioned Nirvana - you name it, if it's punk Chapple's there on the money).

This Song Comes With A Picture is the closest thing that SAUM have come to sounding like a Mclusky track, as it breezes past in a bad tempered flurry complete with breakneck stops and starts and a guitar line that sounds like the Pixies playing nursery rhymes.

Elsewhere Chapple's way with the English language continues to amuse and astound in equal measure. The Cock-A-Doodle-Doo of Democracy is a particular favourite, with Happy Birthday Placenta coming a close second. There's plenty to be found in his lyrical word play too. The stop start punk grind of Peristalsis for example contains the fabulous lines "Your Dear John letter has grammatical errors and failed to mention that you're a cunt" and "Your description of conviction was never that convincing". It also happens to sound like Fugazi on a particularly violent day.

At times Triptych can be a little self indulgent, as on the Full Proof Plan For Successful Living which manages to sound like Chapple's own Revolution #9, but for the most part this is a straight forward angry punk record with some agreeable nods to the grunge scene.

Ultimately this could be the album that does for Chapple what Curses did for Falkous. It shouldn't be long before he's referred to as 'that bloke from Shooting At Unarmed Men', and not as 'ex-Mclusky bassist'. For that, he, and we, should be thankful. Mclusky's split has graced us with two bands that are starting to redefine angry, intelligent punk.

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