Face Stabber

Somewhere amongst the 80 head-splitting, vibe-chasing, cosmically grimy minutes of the Oh Sees’ 20-somethingth album, one might begin to wonder if chief Oh See John Dwyer will ever run out of steam. More than two decades into the band’s career, they—Dwyer and his rotating cast—still manage to find new wheat to harvest from the fields of Classic American Freakouts, from bite-sized thrash (“Heartworm,” “Gholü”) to multi-part suites of drug-den soul (the 15-minute “Scutum & Scorpius,” the 21-minute “Henchlock”) tailored to weirdos of all hair lengths. Behold a vision in which punk and prog didn’t just coexist, but spawned. Fun? Menacingly. Evil? Studiously.

Metamorphosed comes out of the sessions that produced 2019’s Face Stabber. It may only be five tracks long, but it achieves a full album’s length with the help of the more than 23-minute epic “I Got a Lot”. In an interview with Henry Rollins, Dwyer explained that this kind of song, “Usually… takes place at the end of the planned recording. We have extra time and tape to lay down some deep cuts and long jams, etc., the fun part, really.”