Psychic Teens: "Tape" music review

While the rest of the world has been reveling in the resurgence of the cassette tape, some folks have been taking it a step further, and going full VHS! Video Horror Show is a label that only releases VHS tapes, which feature not only music, but also appropriately enough accompanying psychedelic visuals. Past releases have included the electro goth witch house of Masacara, and the droned out abstract psychedelic black metal of Suffer The Shards Of The Lost Cult Of Silence, which was in fact members of Woe and Absu, and now here comes Psychic Teens with Tape, which weirdly enough might sonically fall right in between. Described by the band as "the time you saw your creepy metalhead brother at 80's night" which isn't really that far off. Imagine a sound that was equal parts dirgey psychedelic metal, and broody deep vocal-ed goth, and you'd have the Psychic Teens, and we have to say, it's a pretty badass sound.

Especially if you're tired of all the wimpy twee eighties throwbacks, this is more like a metalized Sisters Of Mercy or Kommunity FK or Fields Of The Nephilim, with some thick squalls of blown out shoegaze psychedelia mixed in for good measure. The sound is dark and gloomy, a little poppy, a lot heavy, the guitars thick and crunchy, the vocals deep and dramatic and wreathed in echo, this is the sort of eighties throwback we can get behind for sure. And these three songs have definitely whetted our appetite big time!

The accompanying video is appropriately VHS looking, mostly live footage of the band, but super grainy and gristly, with plenty of old school interference, the pic flickering and flipping, as if it was being viewed on an old TV with a busted horizontal hold, a playback of an old videotape that had been in a box under the stairs for the last twenty years. Awesome.

Nicely packaged in a cool old school style VHS case, with printed grey on white covers, and recorded onto a white VHS tape, includes a download coupon as well! LIMITED TO 75 COPIES!!

Psychic Teens: "Tape"

• [Antonio Carrasco]

  Yay, more hipster kitsch!

  Because I totally still have a VCR! 

• [Ashen Victor]

  Those Psychic Teens sounds great.
  But yeah, I remember my ex-father-in-law buying a DVD-VHS combo in 2007 and paying three times the cost of a regular DVD player just because he bought The Godfather trilogy back in 1992 and it wasn’t worn out enough to make it unwatchable…
  …that is the kind of insufferable nonsense that gives hipsters bad rep.

  • [David Pescovitz]

    Sadly, my neighborhood video store is going out of business. I noticed yesterday a huge box outside of free VHS tapes. On the top were such greats as Godzilla and Suspiria. I paused and then just kept on walking.

• [Robert Becht]

  Jesus, these people would fight to save small pox.