TEN BENSON Almost Human Ten Benson Stuff

22. March 2022 By Walter Price 0

TEN BENSON Almost Human // Cold Twerky

Ten Benson Almost Human // Cold Twerky are available on Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify.

No disrespect intended, but let’s be honest. Most bands get a little stale as the years wear on. Either they lose interest or they try in vain to recapture something that once was. You wanna know who doesn’t suffer from those afflictions? Ten Benson, that’s who.

The band returns with two sucker-punch slow burners “Almost Human” and “Cold Twerky”. Both tracks have all the signature elements fans have come to yearn for, guttural drivetrains, crackin’ riffs, and messages that need time to simmer. Which is to say, part of frontman Chris Teckkam’s song-crafting brilliance is that you almost need a decoder ring to solve the endless interpretations of his lyrics.

Come on, on “Almost Human”, Teckkam sings, “Made in the image of a thousand random photos
/You cannot tell the difference ‘tween him and early protos/ Inside his chrysalis, of foul proportions/ His DNA reforms in hideous distortions/ He is almost human…” and later, to further cause baffling intrigue, the song goes, “An abomination from the alien nation/ He is almost human, he’s almost human/ You may be vexed to find he’s a lot like mankind/ He is almost human, he’s almost human/ A foul creation from the alien nation..”. Go on, we all know Teckkam keeps his thumbs on the societal pulse, so one could conjure up all sorts of zeitgeist targets here.

Don’t worry, “Cold Twerky”, of course, also has its own less obvious definition, “Bum deal as a matter of fact/ I won’t give you a heart attack/ Oven-ready, keep it steady,/ Forgive me if I don’t pick up the slack/ That’s cold, that’s cold, cold twerky/ Warm liquor, hands numb/ Rear action, all thumbs/ Repeater, seat-heater…”. Let this one swirl around your cloudy noggin for a spell, it’ll have you seeing all sorts of twisty possibilities.

I have no solid answers to offer up when it comes to these two churning singles. But I will state the obvious, Ten Benson are only getting better, more profound, and in an era of ever-increasing angst and turmoil, it’s good to have this nonconforming outfit of far-out rock n rollers ready to soundtrack whatever it is that lays ahead.