I think it's time for a change of pace. Most of the music we review here at Chain D.L.K. involves electronics of some sort or other, but not Flood Twin. This is a meat & potatoes lineup of Grant W. Curry - bass, lead vocals; J. Leslie Hedberg - guitar, backing vocals; Sterling - drums, percussion, backing vocals. While the band comfortably fits in the post-punk catchall genre, I'm putting them in our ‘New Wave’ category because we don't have a post-punk category, and also because this band, its musicians, singer and songs stir strong feeling of nostalgia for the early '80s in me. At that time I was in a quirky new-wave synthpop band and we played extensively around the New York-New Jersey metro area. We shared the stage with lots of other new wave outfits at the time, and one of the bands sounded very much like Flood Twin, although for the life of me I cannot recall the name of that outfit.

No matter; it wasn't Flood Twin as they are a recent entity, and come from way south of NYC anyway. Grant Curry used to play with James Hall and also Pleasure Club in New Orleans. Sometime after Hurricane K. he moved from the Big Easy to Atlanta and formed Flood Twin with Hedberg and Sterling. So this self-titled debut album (11 songs in 45 minutes) won't be released until October 8 (one of the very few times I'm reviewing something before the release date) but I think it's worthy to tell you about it NOW. This is minimal rock at its absolute best. From the opening line of Curry's disaffected vocals on "People" - “There’s no in-between, that means a fucking thing...” and Hedberg's vicious guitar chord shredding that follows, you know this is a band with attitude...lots and lots of attitude. Songs are visceral, pointed and powerful...most of them, anyway. Curry and Sterling's rhythm section is the solid well-oiled machine needed to pull off this kind of thing. While I wouldn't exactly call this swamp rock, there is a swampy undercurrent mixed in with some dubbiness. The pseudo-reggae beat of "Break Your Heart" makes Flood Twin sound like the Anti-Police with no concession to commercialism and no illusions of love.

Sometimes Curry's vocals sound like David Byrne filtered through Ian Curtis, and there is certainly some similarity to early Talking Heads and Joy Division here, but also other bands of the era such as Wire, Gang of Four, Comsat Angels, Mission of Burma, and likely more. Songs I didn't much care for on the album were few and far between - "If You Were Jesus" (not for any religious reasons), "America" (not for any political reasons), and that was about it. "Downtown Zeroes" would have fit in very well with the New York No Wave scene (circa 1976-1980) perfectly. If you heard "Syria" without any frame of reference, you'd swear this was from a band back then. It's a fucking great song with a fucking great line too- "You never ask us, about Damascus..you never ask...you'd rather dance..." If you'd rather dance to rock than EDM then Flood Twin is the band for you! "Heaven" is like the Talking Heads song by the same name, cut to the most minimal with all of Byrne's sentimentality stripped out of it, and no chord changes whatsoever. Heaven is a song where nothing ever happens.

This band ought to be a killer live act; that much I can sense. They also ought to have A&R people swarming to sign them, which might have happened back in 1980, but I doubt that will happen now. It would be hard to come up with a modern comparison for Flood Twin since I don't hear many new acts doing what they're doing, but a less arty Tomahawk might give you an inkling, although much more minimal. Whatever the case, you should just buy this without even hearing it first. It's that worthy.