Let's just say it: Holy Fuck is a lousy name for a band. There may have once been a time when giving your outfit a name like that would have garnered some controversy, gotten you noticed under the "any publicity is good publicity" theory, but now it just looks like you're trying too hard to whip up some stink around you. But that's beside the point-- the most important thing is the music, and Holy Fuck are an interesting band, coming out of Toronto with a couple of vets from King Cobb Steelie and By Divine Right in their ranks and a whole heap of drums with which to assault your tired senses.

I couldn't help smiling at the way the quintet opted to open the album: with a distorted sample, swiped from Simon & Garfunkel's "A Simple Desultory Phillipic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)", of Paul Simon saying "folk rock" as a fuzz bass riff crackles behind him. They don't waste much time getting downright nasty from there, as their proudly junky bank of keyboards kicks in with a jumping rhythm, soon to be joined by a rock solid drum beat. Dual drummers Glenn Milchem and Loel Campbell give the band's music most of its focus, pile-driving the beats and creating an unholy ruckus on the numerous build-ups. "Tone Bank Jungle" is as much a mission statement as an opener, cramming the band's rhythm'n'noise ethos right between your eyes.

The band was formed with the intent of creating the equivalent of modern electronic music without actually using the techniques-- looping, splicing, programming and the like-- of that music. They gathered together the requisite gadgets and instruments and played their first show without rehearsing, and they claim never to rehearse to this day. While this approach leads to plenty of exciting moments and a lot of improvisational tension, it also means that the band doesn't really compose its songs, and as such, there's little in the way of melodic content or any other hook here beyond a beat or toy keyboard ostinato.

Where this becomes a problem is on long tracks like "Korg Rhythm Afro", a song full of rhythmically chattering bleeps and bloops that relies too much on the way the drums fall in and out of rhythm to give it shape-- it's the kind of thing that might be thrilling live, but on record it's tiring, like being beaten with drumsticks for seven minutes. The album's best track, "Bontempi Latin" goes the other way, morphing from section to section as the drums bring the beat through a cycle of stomping breaks, almost jazz-like shuffle and break-neck rock beats, all as the keyboards and guitars graduate from echoing blips to sheets of descending texture, falling like paratroops on the darting percussion.

As high as the album's peaks are, though, they are not numerous enough to make this a record I feel compelled to return to. Several listens in, I still barely remember even the most striking moments. I'll speculate that Holy Fuck might cause people to utter their name in a live setting, as they're a remarkably tight unit chock-full of rhythm, but they may want to consider some rehearsal before their next recording date.