Cactus Truck: Seizures Palace

You have to go back to the energy jazz of Splatter Trio or maybe the punk band Black Flag to find a band comparable to Cactus Truck. The Amsterdam-based trio of drummer Onno Govaert (Vanilla Riot), bassist/guitarist Jasper Stadhouders (The Bureau Of Atomic Tourism), and American-born saxophonist John Dikeman (Universal Indians) play a brand of, bar-clearing music, that both repels and, ultimately, compels.

Seizures Palace is their seventh release, if you count CDr and cassette only releases. It is their third proper CD, and it follows Live In USA (Tractata, 2013) a compilation of live dates from their 2012 37 concert, two month tour of the States where they played with Jeb Bishop and Roy Campbell.

Seizures Palace was recorded in Brooklyn, at the end of that tour, before the trio returned to The Netherlands. The ballsiness of their tour experience is brought to bear here. The music from the 6-second track "*," the 23-second "Difference and Repetition," to the 11 ½ minute "Will To Power" pummel from the get-go. Dikeman's ears are tuned to the machine gun sound of Peter Brotzmann, notably from his years with Last Exit or his recordings with Shoji Hano and Keiji Haino. The charm (can we use that word?) of this trio is that their ferocity is directed outward. Their music detonates, not within but directionally. Stadhouders switches from a a thunderous bass to a metal-on- metal guitar grind and Onno Govaert's drums serve as a comrade in ferocity. Their passion is for speed, hard core energy, and exhaustive music making.