Review Pieces
SLIGHTLY MIFFED - "Puzzled?"
(14-track CD, 1996)
Consisting of four new tracks and re-recordings of five tracks from each of their two demos, this release marks the CD debut of the very eccentric Slightly Miffed. For more insight into what the re-recorded tracks are like, check out the other two Miffed reviews in this issue.
The first noticeable thing about this album is that the re-recorded tracks have been polished up a bit. New vocals have been added to some, new samples to others, and the overall production is much better. The tracks from the "The Kitchen Sink" demo sound a hell of a lot better production-wise, though they still retain the crunching heaviness that they originally possessed. The track "Timeshare", however, has in my opinion been ruined a bit by the introduction of some bloody silly samples (em, they're the vocalists! - TinK). On the other hand, the tracks from the second demo, which I wasn't too fond of, sound better this time around.
So that's the older tracks covered. What about the four new ones? Well, there's "Doomed To..." which features a Thrashy base track littered with samples from Star Trek and the Doom II computer game. Then there's "Fiend Around the Corner" which has a kind of Gothic keyboard sound punctuated with funky guitar licks, "Vague Contempt" which is a rare occurrence of an almost normal song, complete with crunchy guitar, drums and vocals. And finally we have "Little Strange", which certainly lives up to it's title with a variety of strange guitar noises and samples, backed with a decent drum track. A colourful inlay with some hilarious band photos caps off a much more professional release than the previous ones, and one that captures the quirkiness and originality of Slightly Miffed perfectly. As I've said before, this won't be for everyone, but if you like to hear something wildly different, you really need to hear this!