Power Pellut Are Meant to Be Heard on the Needle

There were a lot of great debuts last year from bands worth keeping an eye -- and ear -- on. One band still gaining new fans from their virgin full-length is Louisiana's Power Pellut, who unveiled their sludge to much praise and glory, including a review in Decibel magazine that described each song's chunky riff.

Power Pellut took form when singer/guitarist Lonnie Troquille and drummer Trey Jacobs began writing music that just didn't fit in their other band, Ketea. So they called up bassist Scott McElwee, formerly of Crackfight, to help mess around with these new songs.

"We jammed one serious time, and it started sounding like some down-tuned, noise rock-sounding thing," Troquille told Noisecreep. He now describes the output of the band as "noise rock down-tuned to stupid," as the trio is far from taking things too seriously with a self-titled album, featuring songs like 'Neato Bandito' and artwork of two flies in a possible forced sex scenario.

The band actually found a label very fast. Actually, the label I'm Better Than Everyone found them online, as the story goes. "One day we get this comment on MySpace from this label asking if we had any vinyl releases," Jacobs recalled. "I saw that he had just put out the Deadbird vinyl and thought, 'He obviously likes good heavy s---. I'll see if he might be interested in puttin' our stuff out.' I sent him an email, and the rest is history."

Though it took longer than the band liked to get the album out, which is how all handcrafted vinyl albums tend to be, they couldn't be more stunned by how their first record came out. "We are completely grateful to have some stranger offer to help us out and the finished product is tits," he said.

As is the case with all albums I'm Better Than Everyone Records puts out, this is a vinyl-only deal -- not even a digital code hidden inside the layout. "We'd love for another label to put out a CD," Jacobs admitted when discussing whether the vinyl-only release keeps newer fans from getting into them beyond just some initial interest. "We have been limited to the CDR releases that we do ourselves. Otherwise, It's really not too hard to get 'discovered' in the age of MySpace and all." For those interested in the band but have no needle, Troquille admitted to doing what he can to get those fans music.

But according to the band, vinyl may be the way to listen to Power Pellut. "Its the only way to listen to us ... nice and dirty," Troquille said. And that makes sense, as dirty, raw music never seems to feel right under the clean and compressed digital ways of today. "It just seems that records pick up every bit of noise that is recorded and sound really raw and live," Jacobs added. "It makes for an awesome looking package also."

The big artwork has and always will be a draw when it comes to vinyl. And Power Pellut's debut is no exception, garnished with colors looking like someone shot a crayon box and glued all things metal to it: pentagrams and melting faces. The artwork came courtesy of Glyn Smith. "I almost cried when I saw the finished record," Troquille admitted.