This is a review of "Tender Crawler" recorded by Monster Killed By Laser. The review was written by IS Ramsay in 2014.

It's Friday night. You've just got in from the pub and slumped onto the couch with a couple of slices of toast on your lap. One slice is burnt, the other is basically still bread (who knows how that happened, they've both been in the toaster for the same length of time) and you've a cheeky Russian coffee sitting at your side, though you drunkenly spilled half of it on the way from the kitchen to the living room.

Right, let's see what's on TV. Hmm, the Horror Channel, nice. I've no idea what movie it is but it's set in the future, though it definitely looks more like the 70s. There's a beautiful lady and a rugged man running hand in hand through a spaceship that also looks like a forest. They look scared. And no wonder! There's a bloody big half-robot, half-alien thing chasing after them! It's only walking and they're running as fast as their legs will carry them but it's gaining on them AND there seems to be some kind of creepy slime-juice oozing out the walls! This is some freaky shit. And that's where Monster Killed By Laser come in...

New E.P. "Tender Crawler", the first release from their own Moody Voyeur Recordings label, features four tracks and is the complete soundtrack to the above movie. Whatever it might be. It's as spacey and proggy as you'd expect anything by Monster Killed By Laser to be but a bit more, well, progressive.

Opening track, "Kali's Odyya" uses just guitar and keyboard to start us off in our voyage to the future/past. The song was clearly written in space and the fact that it's named after a book written by an Indian Shaman about the nature of reality, mysticism and tantric battles sums up the feel of it more than my puny words could.

The drums come in on second track "An Inward Ill" sounding almost irregular but still thoroughly well-drilled. It follows on seamlessly from the previous song and welcomes us fully into Monster Killed By Laser's trippy world. You imagine listening to this in a room full of smoke and people with beards, nodding. Always nodding.

Third track, "Amsterdam" is the 'dancey one'. This time the room is full of cool kids of the 60s and 70s flicking Vs to the man and swinging in time violently, cerebrally and suggestively. The instrumentation is damn fine and builds to a massive crescendo of noise towards the end with the guitars, keyboards, bass and drums all fighting against each other yet, ultimately, finding themselves on the same team. It's all gone tremendously Jacob's Ladder.

Final track "Ceyonphre Cadenza" ends as things began with just the guitar and keyboard bringing things to a close. The end credits roll, the crowd stands as one in appreciation. They look at each other, without words, knowing the experience will stay with them for quite some time.

8 out of 10!

"Tender Crawler" is available on very limited cassette or as a two-track download via Bandcamp.