Celeste Potter never belonged in rural South Australia. It was most likely a combination of being the only Asian kid in town, the coke bottle eyeglasses and lack of netball skills. Whatever the reason, she soon blew that Popsicle stand and moved to Melbourne to go to art school. There she found herself immediately thrown together with fellow country misfits Ben Wundersitz and Steve Huf. With no money and no friends, all they had was a shared rock and roll obsession and three appetites for destruction. The exiles spent many months locked up in their little lounge room drinking whisky alone together, swinging their guitars around their heads, breaking things and making pancakes. Around this time the ferocious collective now known as Ouch My Face was born. They have since traded their dark confines for a touring van and a pandemonic reputation, inflicting hearing loss upon themselves and others across Australia and New Zealand Via: their art-punk slabs of rage.
Ouch My Face is three country kids who through necessity found themselves squished together inside a little concrete shoebox in the inner suburbs of Melbourne. It was in this shoebox that they nurtured the beginnings of their musical affinity. With few other friends to speak of, they stared at each other with perplexed faces when the phone rang and refused to open the door for the Mormons or landlords who came knocking. Their days were spent at school or down the dusty aisles of Warren’s Record Paradise and having handed all their money over to Warren, nights were spent eating lemonade scones and watching their mammoth collection of Rage videotapes. On Saturday nights they could often be found in their living room that had no light-bulb, with a bottle of whisky in one hand, guitar in the other, perfecting rock moves they had just witnessed on a chosen video tape. One pivotal morning inevitable progression witnessed them writing and recording a song about Weetbix on an old PC. Over the next three years they worked feverishly on a growing body of songs, extending their content beyond breakfast foods. They wrote and recorded in different shoeboxes but always together. In 2006 they were lured out of the dark confines by a manager with a little moustache and snakeskin shoes. He showed them how to pour their efforts into the giant bubbling cauldron that is the Melbourne music scene. They have since started smoking, quit smoking, bought a big white van and drove it across the state border a couple of times, started smoking again and learned how to stare boldly into the face of an audience without flinching.
“Celeste Potter sure has impressive vocal chords. She shrieks, howls and spits furiously all over Ouch My Face’s debut EP. Still, she somehow manages to rein in the histrionics just enough to not become grating over the course of these five songs. It’s a fine balancing act, especially when she is backed by music that is so in-your-face, it threatens to exit through the back of your head like a high-calibre bullet.
Despite the fact that the three-piece recorded in two different studios with two different engineers, the seamlessness of this EP leads me to believe that they had a very definite vision of what they were trying to achieve. Reminiscent of the glossy production values of mid-’90s post-grunge, all the instruments are up-front, but clearly separated in the mix. This isn’t subtle – and neither should it be.
Potter’s guitar careens wildly around a rhythm section that keeps flexing its muscles. Steve Huf’s bass has the metallic clang employed by the likes of Rage Against The Machine or, closer to home, The Sinking Citizenship. The drums fall into lockstep on the second track ‘Knockouts’, while a male voice barks commands in military fashion and Celeste yells something about getting naked.
‘Firehead’ introduces a funk metal groove, before being smothered in distorted guitar and more furious banshee wails. ‘Obscena Misdemeanour’ mutates from a dance-punk floorstomper into something a lot heavier and leads into the full-blown metal riffing of the short closing track ‘Don’t Take A Knife To The Graveyard’. I’d love to see them go even further in this direction. The fact that they list Sepultura as one of their influences indicates they might. Overall, it’s an impressive opening salvo from Ouch My Face. Don’t ask me what it all means, but with its slick sound and immediate impact, this record is custom-made for “youth” radio and dance floors. You can even mosh to it, if such is your wont, and Potter is a star in the making. Worse things could happen”. by René Schaefer (MESS + NOISE May 2009)
SAT 30 MAY: EP Launch – The Tote Hotel, Melbourne
w/ Fait Accompli, Assassination Collective, East Brunswick All Girls Choir, Drumheller +DJs
THUR 25 JUNE – Club 77, Sydney (My Sydney Riot)
w/ Fait Accompli and Zea Horse
SAT 27 JUNE – The Annandale, Sydney
FBI Fundraiser show
SAT 11 JULY – Ric’s Bar, Brisbane plus guests
OUCH MY FACE
debut selftitled EP out on Valve/MGM mid MAY!
Features KNOCK OUTS, FIREHEAD
and OBSCENA MISDEMEANOUR
(video here! – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R67UffxocQ)
