Puzzled?
(c)1996 Slightly Fishy Records

Review by Neil St.Laurent
CD provided by the band

Slightly Miffed, as I stated last issue, has to be one of the most unique bands around. Their musical style is extremely difficult to describe, short of just saying it's a bit of drumming, distortion, random vocals, and a couple of samples. That wouldn't really do the band any justice though. Much of the recording that Slightly Miffed has done is excellent, but with a forewarning, this music is not for everybody.

The general basis of all Slightly Miffed's songs is the quite "disturbed" guitar ?rhythm? and ?leads?. The rhythm is the standard distorted guitar fare, and quite simply plays some very standard riffs. However, it continually breaks, and becomes a very disjointed flow to the music. Throw on top of this a very similar style of lead (or double rhythm) and you get a very unique sound. This quite definitely disqualifies the band as being metal, and possibly this sound will not appeal well to typical metalheads. At the same time, this is probably what would draw one to like Slightly Miffed. However, this style does appear relatively new to Slightly Miffed, as their earlier recordings, and the included demo songs on the album, have a more metal sound to them, yet still maintain somewhat of a breaking pattern.

Slightly Miffed is more than the guitars though. A lot of the excellences lies in the structure of the songs. First of all, layering that broken guitar sound with anything else and having it sound decent is quite impressive. Some of the songs have vocals on them, and they are quite strange. A combination of spoken word (with harmony at times) and a bit of singing, they deliver a very strange assortment of lyrics, in a very broken manner similar to the guitars. Additionally, most of the songs have an assortment of samples and effects; they do not however have a track of synth layered into their music.

As I said, you'll have to have the right mind set to be able to accept Slightly Miffed. They are weird (both musically and personally). The music is an assortment of experiments, progressive stylings, alternative stylings (despite the band not wishing me to use the term), with a good dose of metal riffing. "Puzzled?" has some really intriging inclusions. "Cheesfish" is a song about Cheesfish, their mascot/logo (to be found on all correspondance and literature of Slightly Miffed). "Doomed To..." is filled with, of course, Doom samples. "Fastfing" is an test to see if any real drummer can survive in the band. Slightly Miffed may be a little hard to digest at first, but after a few songs, or a few listens, you'll agree they are a formidable band whose sound is unique, and worthy of positive reviews and attention.

Mark - Chief Widdler
Jon - Warbling Horribly
Jez - Talking Nonsensically
Tink - Chuggin

http://www.miffed.com/

With Mark and Tink

What do you feel like now that, after all this time, you finally managed to get an album out?

TINK: Words like "older","relieved","happy" spring to mind....

MARK: I feel like it's about time we recorded the next one.

Describe for us, briefly, what you went through in recording this album?

TINK: Briefly...? Yea right.. OK, in a couple of words .. A f**king lot! Including a coke sniffing, prozaced up business wanker, a pizza and coke in the US, about a dozen websites and a year of hard work... IF anyone ever sayz life in a "rock 'n' roll" band is easy, I will personally kill them... ;)

MARK: The actual album was recorded and mixed in five days, which was two days on guitars for sixteen songs, a day on vocals, a day for computer stuff and finally a day on the final mix.

Why the inclusion of so much demo material on the album?

TINK: It was always our intention to re-record all the demo material, as they were just that, demos. The sound quality of the demos isn't the best in the world (The Kitchen Sink is so named because that's what it was recorded in!) and the actual songs are really kicking, and deserved the studio treatment.

MARK: All the new material is being saved up for the next album and gigs.

"Cheesfish". Why?

TINK: "It might swim, but not if we throw it....?"

MARK: The rhythmic and melodic content of this piece is supposed to represent the embodiment of the fore mentioned aquatic animal into sound as arranged for thrash.

What ever became of the Alice Cooper cover of "Nice"? Were you unable to resolve legal issues, or did they just get you so pissed off that you no longer felt like including it?

TINK: In the end, we just didn't resolve the legal crap. We actually recorded it, but it never made it onto the CD.... maybe one day it will be released. We still do it live, just don't tell Alice OK...

MARK: We only want to release it if we can get Alice to sing on it! So if you're reading this... pretty please.

Was there an attempt to find a label to sign you guys, or were intent on releasing it independantly?

TINK: We have received a couple of "Record Deal" offers, but 10% just doesn't cut it, and we've not ready to sign our lives, souls and fish away for that!

Who is Kane (other than one of the producers)? What relationship did the band have with him prior to doing the album?

MARK: Absolutely none. He was an engineer who came with the studio so we told him what we wanted and lo it was done. The spacey delays were his doing.

Where did the album concept, as far as artwork is concerned, come from?

TINK: We actually did a CD-R of our 2 demos just for fun, and the cover of that was a jigsaw of the 2 covers from the demos. Not in glorious 3D like puzzled, but it looked damn good so the idea developed into "Puzzled?"... Having got some beefy 3D software I thought it would be fun to do a 3D jigsaw, not that I had ever done anything like that before so was pretty pleased with the way it came out. The name "Puzzled?" was thought up one night, in a flash of inspiration..

MARK: I took some of the band piccies and played about with them as I didn't want my ugly mug in the sleeve.

Has the touring been going well? Have you had the chance to do touring outside of England? If so, what differences were there in the reaction to your music?

TINK: We've only just starting the "gigging" thing now. We've doing Matt Corns "First Blood" gig on Feb 6th (http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Towers/5999/nublood.htm) and you can expect to see us in the US again (if all goes to plan) somewhen in December when we will be playing at the The Hard Rock Cafe at Universal Studios Florida. (http://www.miffed.com/fishy/crimbo/). We'll also be cropping up anywhere they will have us, so be prepared.... (and if you know anywhere that will have us, drop us a line and we'll see what we can do!)

Now that you have released and album, what style changes do you see your music taking on in the near future?

TINK: ooh, I can see us mellowing right out and doing ballads for the rest of our lives.... yea, right.. There's already about half a dozen new songs in the works, and not one of them you could possibly call a "normal" song...

MARK: Any stlye that stops us writing two songs that sound the same!

Are there any particular moods that you try to invoke from your music?

MARK: It's supposed to be fun music but it seems to invokes confusion and is occasionly sinister... oooh.

As a band what type of image are you trying to obtain?

TINK: As far as I'm aware, we aren't really going for an "image" thing... We're us, and that's about the image of it!

MARK: Image is farthest from our minds so we try and let the music create it's own image without us all wearing purple crush velvet suits.

Who do you cite as musical influences nowadays?

MARK: I very rarely buy any music made in the last ten years now but on the thrash/metal side I like Sepultura's latest offering and old Megadeth/Metallica/Tendencies stuff. I listen to anything from sixties jazz to seventies funk to Beastie Boys to Mr Bungles excellent recent album. In fact anything apart from shitty guitary retro crap which was alright the first time round but is now played by crap people in a crap way. So there! :)

Anything else you'd care to say?

MARK: No

TINK: Cheesefish ?

How can somebody get a hold of your album?

TINK: You can get "Puzzled?" online, via our secure ordering facility on our website, its also now available in the USA direct from "Underground Metal Distribution", and should soon be available down under in New Zealand too! (My, don't we travel)... Heres the website addresses: http://www.miffed.com/puzzled/order/ http://norden1.com/~hkolb/distro.html (US Distro)