Album Review: Total Control - Typical System

There has always been a flippant expectation lent to Total Control by certain undiscerning factions of the music “industry”, ready to lump the Melbourne five-piece either within the garage-rock melange, the pigfuck mongrels, the nascent dolewave zeitgeist, the synth darlings or the industrial dirgelings. All hold flimsy weight, and are destined to flounder – you will find no palpable pigeonhole here. Listen to 2011's Henge Beat closely, an album of flagrant reinvention, tempering an aggressive post-punk maelstrom with backward glances, and embracing synthetic genres hitherto seen as incongruous to the currents of gritty realism.

But this only accentuates the fact that Total Control control the listener – never is there a moment when they paint themselves into a corner, when they offer up a straight answer. Like one of member Mikey Young's many other bands, Ooga Boogas, Total Control are victims only to their imagination and whims, albeit with a harsher, oft militaristic bent. Typical System highlights this, but there is nuance amongst the primitivism. Single and clear standout Flesh War is a glorious new wave. 2 Less Jacks take the nihilist muzzle off to out-Iceage Iceage; Systematic F**k and Expensive Dog provide the blacked-out garage-punk bite. There is that languid, freeform nature the aforementioned Ooga Boogas excel in on Liberal Party (complete with saxophone solo), the synth twilight futurist expands on The Ferryman, and on seven-minute Black Spring we get a motorik post-punk behemoth of twitching, fevered tension. If there is a typical system on Typical System, it's that Total Control will do whatever the fuck they want – and do it better than most.