Viet Cong are a Canadian four-piece who – like fellow indie bods PC Worship from New York and Southend’s These New Puritans – dabble in industrial textures and noise reminiscent of Whitehouse and Throbbing Gristle. Their seven-track debut sees them connect the dots between the two worlds and, perhaps where some of their forebears have failed, find tunes among the melee. There are moments when over-saturated drums meet Gregorian chanting and Magnet-style folk oddness (Newspaper Spoons and March of Progress), but the band are at their best when experimentation complements their songwriting rather than defines it. The time-signature-shifting Bunker Buster leads into standout Continental Shelf, which has shades of Television in its jangling guitar riffs excavated from layers of noisy feedback. While a couple of tracks start off as seemingly straightforward spiky post-punk, they develop into a super slow-mo synth dirge (Silhouettes) and an 11-minute funereal jam (Death). An ambitious and rewarding debut.
