The 'punge rock' band Paranoid Alice have been causing waves with their tsunami like live shows across the country and even ripping up a picture of Putin on a music tv show over the past year. Their debut album Mental Illness For The Masses is a combination of grunge, punk, doo-wop and noise psych, during the recording they did a seance and fired two bass players before they took the songs on the road.
At the moment their lyrics have been the subject of much mystery, mainly because over the years most of the best rock albums have checked a lot of the same esoteric boxes this band is fascinated by. Paranoid Alice mix everything from true crime stories such as the Jonestown Massacre, Caroline Calloway, Charles Manson, Jessica Wongso. Horror and psychological movies are examined such as 'The Shinning', 'Black Widow' and 'The Joker' not to mention society and woke culture on their song Buttons.
Paranoid Alice are a weird mixture of being an articulate band who have obviously read up on psychology and crowd control, but once they plug in they capture a dangerous quality that all the best bands possess on record and onstage. They are unpredictable and enjoy provoking audiences when other bands arent these days. Over the year they have been compared to The Jesus & Mary Chain, Oasis, The Doors, New York Dolls, Sex Pistols, Throbbing Gristle, Joy Division, Nirvana and The Velvet Underground.
The guitar smashing went viral after many older people complained about the destruction which captivated social media thus creating a new generation gap in rock music, with those understanding the frustration of todays society that is then dissipated when smashing a guitar onstage, it is also the purest form of rebel yell that can be made in rock music. The band joked about the attention but it hasnt stopped the band from their ideals. Another angle that has cropped up is the use of mysticism and shamanic imagery they have used on posters and bootlegs, including artwork from the Salem witch trials, voodoo ceremonies and occult secret societies. The overt cruelty and menace of the music — the droning and distortion behind lyrics about addiction, sadism and cultural exploitation doesn't come from nowhere. Paranoid Alice will show you where that perpetual novelty of the dark side comes from, and allowes you to connect the sonic dots with other, contemporaneous artistic eruptions.
