Yep, I Still Don't Fucking Know What Genre Troldhaugen Are

Troldhaugen are an... interesting band, to say the very least. 

If you haven't heard of Troldhaugen before, then I envy you in many ways. For those of you lucky enough to not have heard this whacky Wollongong band and their latest offering, 'IDIO+SYNCRASIES' just yet, then please know that it's a real mixed bag of varied sounds and off-kilter ideas all dog-piled into one ridiculous whole.

This is the kind of band you remain deafly silent about when your date says "So, what music are you into?".

In a nutshell, it's like Frank Zappa recorded an orgy of System Of A Down's various vocal styles, The Dillinger Escape Plan's sense of rhythm and syncopation, Osaka Punch's funky grooves and feel, Totally Unicorn's rough, utter piss-takery and Weird Al's general quirkiness and attempt at comedy, all the while Vincent Price creepily watched on and jacked off in the corner. In far less graphic terms, this overly colourful, striking and completely batshit insane 12-track album is an odd, messy mixture of mathy hardcore, funk, electronica, scripted audio skits, "comedic" breaks (yet much like Mother!, this LP will never be funny), far too many samples for its own good, and a recurring sense of "Yeah nah, fuck it, let's just do it anyway". Putting it lightly, 'IDIO+SYNCRASIES has many sonic quirks, but I do give these NSW weirdos solid points for not caring at all for genre norms or restrictions and for their ludicrous sense of musical variety.

I mean, that's gotta count for something, right?

Yes, Troldhaugen are a metal band but at the same time, they're also not a metal band either. As their guitarist Matthew Bell joked to Illawarra Mercury back in August, it's "silly metal". Which is the most tamest way of putting it, really. Of course, this quartet are taking the piss so fucking much that they're practically drunk off the very stuff, so I guess all of the above would be a fitting genre description for this band's sound? Yeah, that'll have to do I suppose.

Anyway, if you've got the morbid curiosity and the patience for it, enter Troldhaugen's weird and bizarre circus below.