The Coneheads

Total Conetrol [Cassette] (2014)

Alex Ward

The Coneheads are a group of kids from Indiana who recently decided to shovel their filthy, unwanted, bug-brittle garbage into the ears of impressionable Midwesterners, and their cigarette butts and banana peels and used up Pepto Bismol bottles have been whirling into a nasty tumbleweed of hype ever since their proudly priced $3 demo Total Conetrol dropped in 2014.

They’ve got a shrill, alien sound that immediately establishes high replay value, invoking similar feelings to the first time I’d heard Secret Prostitutes. The vocals are so impossibly strange and powerful that it’s worth the heavily creased forehead it takes to detect any sense of coherent lyrical content. The first thing you hear is a desperate creature shriek, “Yahhhhhhh!” It’s unique and it’s surprising, but it’s not entirely sustainable.

The Coneheads change it up exactly once on this demo in the re-do of their song “Hack, Hack, Hack!” It’s a slow, measured take on the previous, more manic track, but the synth combined with the lo-fi guitars, murmuring bass line and heavily distorted, creature-ly vocals make it the most purely enjoyable track on the demo. I could listen more easily to an entire LP of songs like this than another demo with songs like “‘Notha Thing.”

A couple songs are just filler, namely “Waste O’ Space,” which is ironically the longest track on the demo at 1:38. While the catchy vocal melodies lead the steady weirdo riffs in the other songs, these songs just pass the time in their best Coneheads outfits. The kazoo-like effect can be fun when used sparingly, as it is in some of the other standout tracks like “Out of Conetrol” and “Alien & Warm,” but it’s tedious in “Waste O’ Space.” Less is more, you dirty aliens.

There’s little to dislike about The Coneheads debut demo tape. They have a fresh yet familiar sound that puts a lot on the table, but I can only hope they know which items to expand upon in their further releases. I can feel my skull slowly splitting apart into a monstrous migraine at the very thought of more kazoo-vocals, but I can also see myself thoroughly enjoying an invasive alien probe of my frail, slightly unhealthy body, as long as songs like “Hack, Hack, Hack! (Ver. 2)” are the soundtrack.