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Despite its austere artwork and general air of DIY grit, Poverty Metal is an astonishingly colourful and esoteric affair. Henrik Palm has a diverse CV including stints in In Solitude and (allegedly) Ghost, but his solo work sounds quite unlike anything else he has done. There’s a magpie-like accumulation of ideas going on here, but somehow it all hangs together. Opener Bully is a scratchy collage of wonky noise and spiky guitars, vaguely redolent of late 70s experimentalists This Heat, but with bittersweet melodies threaded through the chaos. Elsewhere, Sugar is a rumbling, rambling art rock hymn, Given Demon is a shapeshifting, prog-psych concerto, and the sparse and pretty Nihil perfectly sets up the krautrock pulse and hard rock swagger of Nihilist. There is even room for a fuzzed-up, insanely heavy cover of Twisted Sister’s Destroyer. It’s all quite mad, of course, but brilliant with it.
