Prolapse: I Wonder When They're Going To Destroy Your Face

Prolapse: I Wonder When They’re Going To Destroy Your Face

(Tapete Records)

LP | CD | DL

Released 29 August 2025

Martin Gray quakes with barely restrained glee and excitement at the juicy prospect of the first brand new Prolapse album to shed its unruly load onto this mortal coil (no not the 4AD collective) in a quarter of a century. His mojo well and truly reignited, he sets about finding novel ways to articulate his sheer delight on getting his first earful of this much anticipated new offering.

Preface : Summer 2016

Picture the setting: enjoying the sunshine seated outdoors at the Botanical Gin Garden (in Liverpool’s Baltic district) one lovely balmy July evening (not too hot, so it was just ideal). Myself and a friend chew over some of the more waywardly esoteric and improbable musical permutations of the recent past. Talk turns to all kinds of unfeasible shit – post-post-rock, death–gaze, speed-pronk, weirdo-beardo neo-folk, slo-fi dub-sludge, electro-punk-crust, and, best of all, thrash-reggae-grindcore. If the latter two fabricated genres have more than a whiff of the late great Steven Wells (aka ‘Swells’ – he of the NME, Vox and others) about them, then maybe that’s not too far from the truth. After all, he was instrumental and inspirational to me starting my own shambolically irreverent fanzines back then and, as a god amongst gods to some of us, we don’t say that lightly.

Anyway, my friend has got this thing about bands that sound like total complete uncontrollable chaos set to music. After citing all kinds of potential candidates (acts like Mr Bungle or Liverpool’s legendary shape-shifting collective of genre-busting chameleons a.P.A.t.T.), he then namechecks a (Scottish) band that existed briefly in the late 1980s to the early 1990s which featured a singer going absolutely fucking goo goo batshit on stage and on record. That band were called the Stretchheads and they – surely enough – defied all possible categorisation, being a frantic and frenzied amalgam of just about everything touched upon above (with perhaps the exception of the first two, and the third). They were also, happily, another of Steven Wells’ most loved bands. And it’s not difficult to see how and why they were kindred spirits of sorts.

Suitably excited, I nodded manically in agreement and told him that I still have a couple of EPs and an album which were on Blast First records. We then collapsed in fits of laughter trying to recall how the portly singer (Phil, who went under the name of P6) used to perform wearing a surgeon’s garb (he was a psychiatric nurse by profession) and a pig mask among other things.

Talk then crossed to other bands that featured crazed vocalists who were Scottish and made up their own rules and were a complete law unto themselves, so I offered up the name Prolapse, only to be met with a blank, puzzled expression on my friend’s face. I was initially a bit crestfallen to see his reaction, but promptly snatched the smartphone out of his grasp and told him that I will google them and show him some examples of their music to further attest to their genius.

On hearing a few short clips of some of the tracks that I recommended he give a quick spin to, his face soon lit up into a grin of pure ecstatic joy. ‘How come I never came across these fuckers before?’ he asked himself aloud apologetically, in a brief moment that pretty much made out like the biggest subliminal ‘D’OH!!!’ ever witnessed.

Fast forward a few months and he was converted. Another new Prolapse aficionado. My mission was done. Once again I felt fully vindicated.

The present : Summer 2025

It seemed improbable at first. After all, Prolapse decided to stop in 1999 shortly following the release of their last album Ghosts Of Dead Aeroplanes. But over the period between 2015 to the present, they had intermittently reassembled to play a few sporadic one off gigs. This meant the anticipation of possible new material on the horizon…. a fantasy which duly started coalescing into something approaching reality.

And so here we are. 2025. What a turbulent time to be alive. Bad shit is flying all around us. The world is at war with itself. Global greed is off the scale, tethers fraying, synapses snapping, fascism rearing its ugly head again everywhere, with egregious, narcissistic and dictatorial psychopaths at the helm doing all they can to unsettle and unstable and undo decades of diplomatic relations all in the name of…..what the fucking fuck exactly? Therein lies the problem. Even they don’t fucking know what they want. Content to keep posturing and thrashing around like headless chicken-shaped dildos whilst the world around them gets ever more conflagrational. Maybe that’s how they go about showing the rest of civilisation just how grown up and in control they are.

Maybe if they were all given a copy of the new Prolapse album – with its brilliantly belligerent and pugnacious title that could in all feasibility be aimed at them personally too – they may back down from their shit stirring, sabre-rattling, chest beating antics, crinkle their chests and faces in embarrassment and promptly curl up and self combust in shame….and then do the rest of humanity a fucking favour in the process.

This is the tonic that some of us have been waiting for. It’s also a beautifully poetic coincidence that two of the bands I loved most from the magical decade of the 1990s* have both returned with respective new albums this year after what seems like interminable hiatuses. Stereolab re-emerged in May with their latest new album – their first in 15 years – even though they’d already regrouped to play live six years previous in 2019. Kindred spirits Prolapse (who at one point shared labels with Stereolab – Lissy’s – and exhibit a similar motorik/Krautrock approach to some of their output) were inactive for even longer – more than two decades – but similarly, did reactivate themselves for a couple of one off live shows from 2015 onward.

*Plus one other that, sadly, is about to bow out very soon (Saint Etienne – of which I will be coming up with an in depth blog-cum-feature in due course)

It’s taken them another ten years to finally unleash new music, a few tracks which were hinted at and previewed in those earlier live gigs. But it’s almost like they’ve never been away! Depending on how you see it, these last 26 years have either flown by or dragged by at interminable pace. Perhaps the latter feels more tangible given the length of time Prolapse have been dormant.

What is most comforting about this new album is, given the length of absence, Prolapse still sound exactly like Prolapse. Not for them the strange diversions into more convoluted or contrived ‘art-rock’ territory. You are hard pushed to find much deviation from the blueprint that marked their 1994 debut Pointless Walks To Dismal Places or their 1997 tour de force The Italian Flag. There are even one or two moments here that hark back to the second – defiantly experimental – album Backsaturday from 1995. And, fittingly, a couple that also recall some of the more hazy, opaque numbers found on 1999’s Ghosts Of Dead Aeroplanes.

In short, IWWTGTDYF is a neat fusion and composite of all those previous four Prolapse albums. It’s as good as one could expect really. Every little trademark element is there, present and correct, in its right place: the relentless, chugging repetition of twin guitars from Pat Marsden and Dave Jeffreys that just piledrive their way into your cranium – check. The excoriating intensity of the rhythm section courtesy of bassist ‘Geordie’ Mick Harrison and drummer ‘Octopus’ Tim Pattison – check. The crossfire of duelling stream of consciousness lyrics from Linda Steelyard and ‘Scottish’ Mick Derrick that sit atop (or sometimes submerge themselves in) the sonic maelstrom – check. (When not augmenting on third guitar) the washes of retro / sci-fi keyboards from Donald Ross Skinner that often struggle to make themselves heard above the cacophony – check.

It’s a masterful and unique combination that simultaneously comes across as tight and disciplined yet also totally unhinged and disorderly. Very few bands can pull that trick off with such remarkable aplomb.

To the faithful among us, the opening seconds of first track Fall Of Cashline are like a much needed aural balm : hearing that trademark scuzzy staccato guitar riff, promptly followed by the familiar sound of Mick Derrick’s voice, belting out ‘It’s the middle of the day / it’s the middle of the night / it’s the same old people / and the same old sights’, before the rest of the band inevitably kick into their hypnotic post-punk / motorik groove is like welcoming back a long absent friend. Prolapse excel at making the most abrasive noise sound like a comfort blanket into which you can totally immerse – and lose – yourself. I am beaming like a Cheshire Cat on  MDMA already.

Album teaser On The Quarter Days, released as the first single, is probably the closest thing here to being the most immediate track, with its call-and-response refrain that soon becomes the track’s chief nagging earworm. Second single, the relatively brief Cha Cha Cha 2000, harks back to their last album with a Mick monologue (a bizarre 1960s-inspired dream story name-checking Canned Heat, Cat Stevens and Donovan) punctuated by his explosive accusatory exclamations at regular intervals. Apropos of nothing, Linda Steelyard weighs in with equally absurd instructions (alluding to the dance of the title perhaps?) ‘take my teeny tiny hand, it really isn’t far……I’m a celebrity!’. So reassuring to see that it’s business as usual then.

Part of the fun of listening to any Prolapse composition lies in deciphering the thick Glaswegian brogue of Mick’s narratives when offset against Linda’s interjections. Without the lyric sheet, this sometimes becomes a more than challenging task!

It’s not all one-dimensional ear-shredding screeing for the sake of it either: Ghost In The Chair is quite possibly the most eerie and restrained the band have ever sounded, a slow burning seven minute epic that reeks of the echoes heard in empty factory buildings. It’s an improvised number featuring an exchange between Mick and Linda, the latter’s more distant (and phased/reverb-treated) voice sounding almost like the eponymous spectre of the oft-repeated title, as the backing begins to swell and unfold and build to a noisier fade.

Err On The Side Of Dead revisits the relentless cyclical poly-rhythms, offset with insistent nagging bassline and trademark flailing drumming. The nightmarish claustrophobia is encapsulated by Mick’s deadpan proclamations countered by Linda’s repeated desperate wailing ‘I want to go to bed/ I’m tired I am dead/I have to start at one / I want to have some fun’ which then later changes to her snapping: ‘I have to start at eight …. I hate I hate I HATE I HATE!!’ as if to further emphasise her growing anguish, and the state of displacement and agitation only becomes more disquieting over time.

Mick’s voice takes centre stage on Cacophony No. C, which is unusual (by Prolapse standards) in that it does not feature conflicting vocals between himself and Linda, rather the latter simply backs him on harmonies on this bass-heavy number which is then succeeded by what sounds like the most avant-garde improvisation on the record: Jackdaw. On first listen and hearing Mick bellowing ‘Three minutes to Cleveland!’ (an amusing nod back to his ‘all aboard the Ark Royal!‘ from 1994’s Doorstop Rhythmic Bloc) which ushers in the total scorched earth bedlam of this brief track, sounding for all the world like they’re getting their collective anger at the state of the world off their chests and simply delighting in trashing the joint.

If there are precedents to this totally demented sonic destruction, they can be found on their Backsaturday album where several of the improvised (and shorter) tracks have a similar sense of chaotic spontaneity. The utterly insane bludgeoning  of the drumkit by Octopus Tim is particularly crazed and feral – I would wager that he must have split a few skins and cymbals by the end of this recording, which, as almost expected, cuts off abruptly just before the three minute mark, as if to suggest that this is just an extract of a far longer piece where they’re simply laying waste to their instruments, which may or may not have lasted for twenty minutes or more.

Ectoplasm United – dig that title – is a welcome revisit of the relentlessly propulsive high-tempo numbers which Prolapse triumph at (heard on The Italian Flag in particular) and features some cool phasing effects now and again to give it a bit of a psych-garage haze, with Mick’s bizarre repeated refrain of ‘Closing windows / closing windows / closing windows’ prefacing an unexpected nugget of wisdom in ‘Contrary to public opinion, people lie with their eyes’ appearing towards the end.

After all of the preceding tumult and pandemonium, the album concludes with A Forever on an uncharacteristically mellow and tranquil note – another pleasant diversion from the expected norm. Everything now slows to a crawl from the previous breakneck pummelling and tearing. The words that can be decipherable from Mick and Linda appear to deal with returning to old haunts and reflecting on past lives lived, loved and lost. Possibly a nostalgic reminiscence of travelling back home…… the last words from Linda making themselves apparent at the close: ‘Sixty miles an hour……. We stopped at Leicester Forest East / and decided to stay…. forever.’

Prolapse have engineered – and executed – a perfect return with this album and, crucially, have lost absolutely none of the vitality and freshness, or visceral aggression, that typified all their previous recordings. Whilst many artists mellow with age and become a tad more accessible and (snort) contemporary sounding to fit in with whatever current faddish innovations there may be, such trivialities are completely anathema to this septet, who continue to doggedly pursue their own agenda and plough the furrow that they’re most at ease with.

Through creating this compulsively enjoyable racket they have expertly proved one thing : even despite the intervening passing of the years (a full quarter of a century remember!), they are just as lean, mean and uncompromising as they’ve ever been. And at times like these when so much bland generic anodyne shit continues to infiltrate my eardrums and a lot of new music made by younger bands fail to move or excite me to the extent that I positively crave an antidote that just says ‘to hell with being nice or boring, we need to get angry!’, this is a very fine thing indeed.

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All words conceived, written, arranged, edited and re-edited by Martin Gray

More verbose and convoluted witterings by Martin can be found here if you want to take a look