Death Crossed The Street – Reverend Beat-Man & Milan Slick (Voodoo Rhythm)
In a world content with the cute and besotted with the bland, Reverend Beat-Man is the ultimate trashman. Whether he’s in one-man band guise or fronting the four-headed fuzz-fest that is The Monsters, this intense Swiss eccentric has been touring the garages and licensed shitholes of this world since 1992 peddling primal rock and roll, both live and via his own Voodoo Rhythm label.
The label’s slogan is “Records to ruin any party” and it’s home to some of the most esoteric, trashy and weird music that rock and roll’s hatched. “Death Crossed The Street” is no exception.
This time out, it’s Beat-Man on vocals, guitar and drums and a younger collaborator, Milan Slick, on vocals, guitar and keys. Of course, they met while soundtracking a vampire film. What else do you do in Switzerland during a pandemic?
“Death Crossed The Street” is a challenging listen, the aural offspring of a marriage of the synth death dances of Suicide and the fuzz, rattle and roll of The Sonics if they’d been hooked on cheap cough mixture.
Lyrically, it’s as rudimentary as an Italian driving test, but if you came here seeking deep insights into the human condition, you deserve to be shot with a ball of your own shit and condemned to be buried in a crypt with a still breathing Bono.
Too harsh? “I Want Your Sweat” is the title repeated 10 times, while “Shut Up” consists of: “I said shut up, shut the fuck up/Fragile woman falling apart, fragile woman”. There’s another verse and an outro that says: “they gonna fuck you up”, but you get the drift. It’s not that Beat-Man and Milan aren’t lyric people – they’re just into economy.
“Seduce” kicks the album into gear at the outset with distorted guitars, one-note piano and a tempo that picks up before it hits breakneck speed at the end. “I Found Out” sounds like an industrial-tinted ode to losing at life.
Slick and Beat-Man sound well matched. As co-vocalists, it’s often impossible to pick who’s singing what (although Beat-Man seems to be warbling most of the songs), and their shared ethos of keeping it as lo-fi as possible is obvious.
Milan takes the mic for the country-swamp throb, ”In The End”, and makes it his own. It’s almost radio-friendly (if radio was enlightened). “Feed My Brain” and the Alan Vega-like “Shut Up” are cut from similar cloth.
If Reverend Beat-Man was known for one song among his followers (and church-goers), however, it would be for the catchy “Fuck You Jesus, Fuck You Lord”. It’s referenced here by the more direct “Fuck You Jesus”. If you threw in an ode to bacon there’d be something on this record to offend everyone.
Can you dig the Sweet reference in the intro of “Junkie Child” before the backward masking cuts in?
Like a car crash, you can avert your gaze but the collision will occur anyway and the sound of jarred and twisted metal will be ringing in your ears for some time after. “Death Crossed The Street” is released on vinyl, CD, cassette and quarter-inch tape (!) next week with a tour of Europe and the UK to coincide. 
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