Listen: Le Butcherettes return with ‘Demon Stuck in Your Eye’

Two years ago during a performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Teri “Gender Bender” Suaréz climbed to the top of a lighting rig, locked her legs around a rung and then hung upside and sang. Standing between her skull and a stage was little more than gravity, and while the move was certainly of the don’t-try-this-ever variety, Suaréz and her trio Le Butcherettes are committed, aggressively, to the visceral.

But the reckless antics would be just that if the music wasn’t also incendiary, where every rant or tear shed is amplified for its maximum emotional venom. Yet after releasing a debut album in 2011 with “Sin Sin Sin,” the Los Angeles-via-Guadalajara band has largely been missing in action. Suaréz has spent much of the past two years working closely with creative collaborator Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (of Mars Volta and At the Drive-In fame) on his Bosnian Rainbows project.

While Bosnian Rainbows gave Suaréz room to sing over more abstract, electronic-based arrangements, the act’s approach to experimentation was more low-key and constrained than the feral approach of Le Butcherettes. With Rodriguez-Lopez working a new project with his old mate Cedric Bixler-Zavala (Rodriguez-Lopez is also in Le Butcherettes), Suaréz is cutting Le Butcherettes loose again.

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Like everything related to Le Butcherettes, it’s all happening rather immediately. A sample, “Demon Stuck in Your Eye,” is below, and an album, “Cry is for the Flies,” is planned for online release as early as Tuesday.

In a 2012 interview Suaréz threatened to Pop & Hiss that “Cry Is for the Flies” would be less “in your face” than “Sin Sin Sin.” Hmmm, perhaps Suaréz has a vastly different definition of “in your face” than the rest of the universe, as its proposed 10 tracks hit hard and fast. There’s plenty of evil lurking ‘round these parts, and not only when Suaréz is gleefully singing that she wants to “make a child cry.”

The sound on “Poet from Nowhere” is that of a carnival of our nightmares, while “The Gold Chair at the Fireman” is the sort of cynical, cocky swagger the Stooges made a career out of. An angelic choir appears on “Normal, You Were,” but it quickly turns hellish amid churning guitars and images of war and death.

Sure, there are one or two moments, such as “Shame, You’re All I’ve Got,” where the guitars quiet down a bit, but the keyboard boasts such a dementedly toyish quality that the tone is still on-edge. Or there’s “My Child,” where Lia Braswell’s rhythms is of the bell-tolling variety and the gender politics hinted at in the song’s lyrics will take a few more listens to unwrap.

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For now, listen below to “Demon Stuck in Your Eye,” which highlights what appears to be one of the album’s central themes, namely the anger and paranoia at fighting to not become what we hate (a subject hinted at in the album’s spoken-word intro from punk poet laureate candidate Henry Rollins). In a relatively short and bluesy garage-punk burst, the song offers a hint at the multiple personalities that live inside the colorful vocals of Suaréz, a range that stretches from wild, sinister excitement to a stare-you-down growl.

Le Butcherettes are planning to release the album as early as Tuesday morning online via Rodriguez-Lopez’s label/production company Nadie Sound Inc. Details and links to purchase will be posted on the act’s Facebook page. A vinyl release is due to follow in June and Le Butcherettes will be touring from June through the remainder of 2014.

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