Shit & Shine: 229 2299 - Girls Against Shit

In a rather fortunate coincidence, earlier this week the British Board of Film Classification made the rare decision to reject a Japanese horror film by the name of "Grotesque".

The move will make it illegal for any retailers in the U.K to sell the film to any persons: regardless of their age.

David Cooke, the director of the classification board, said, “Unlike other recent torture-themed horror works, such as the ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel’ series, ‘Grotesque’ features minimal narrative or character development and presents the audience with little more than an unrelenting and escalating scenario of humiliation, brutality and sadism.”

These so-called 'torture porn' movies have finally reached an impasse. For the last decade, they have increasingly tested the very limits of what audiences can endure. Only now has it has finally reached the point where anyone viewing this latest escalation will likely leave the experience with a warped and twisted psyche. A brain mutilated by a constant barrage of harrowing and scarring images. An experience decried by professionals and unwelcome in any civilised society.

Welcome to its musical counterpart.

At eighty minutes in length, there is no story to this album, there is no artistic insight to be gathered, it is just that: a test of endurance to see if you can really withstand the continued subjection to such heinous sonic contortions.

We're sure if experts studied this album, they would find a perfect parallel to present interrogation techniques, from the lulls in-between stages to the changes between hot and cold; blunt and sharp.

Inside Shit & Shine's "ways of making you talk" kit is little more than a rack of distortion pedals, guitars and every drum-kit you might happen to find in the territory of Christmas Island. Asking whether they are technically proficient at utilising these tools is as redundant as asking if the CIA used Evian for water-boarding.

Should you actually make it to the other side (we barely managed) you will emerge from the darkness a changed person. Casting off the shackles of life, death, fear, regret, suffering, temptation and knowledge as the useless bonds which they are. Your one thought will be that of elation, the realisation that no matter what was thrown at you, you made it through. Raise those arms to the skies and cry for the very clouds themselves.

That's IF you make it out alive.

* On the reasoning that we can't award a Black & Decker points for musical quality, we're witholding the score for Shit & Shine also.