The first thing one notices about No Anchor’s second release Steam, is its elaborate and mysterious packaging. A cardboard fold-out depicts a shadowy urban panorama. Not unlike the work of Bill Henson, the photographs hint at potential violence, the night time murk penetrated by cold fluorescent lights. Two figures loiter in a deserted industrial parking lot. What will happen?

A photo in the booklet shows a skinny man in jeans and checked shirt lying face down in a weed-covered wasteland. Juxtaposed is an image showing the aftermath of a particularly auto-destructive rock gig. A bass guitar has been slammed into a collapsed drum kit; the overturned kick drum is covered in what could be blood or wine. A dark splatter on the floor may be brains or vomit. Given equal prominence to the images is a quote from surrealist artist Man Ray. In part, it reads: “It is marvelous that we are the only species that creates gratuitous forms.” How right he was.

Investigation reveals the two men in the photo to be drummer Alex Gillies (ex Look Pond) and bassist/singer Ian Rogers (ex Iron On). They are from Brisbane and they are No Anchor. They created the artwork and they created the music – a sprawling epic of thudding drums, distorted bass and occasional shreds of human voice that defies categorisation. To label Steam, to analyse it, or to place it within a musical context is almost redundant. It is what it is. It is utterly gratuitous.

The rhythms are plodding, a leaden trudge through the bleak ruins of western civilisation, but there are none of the ridiculous trappings and bogus philosophies that have come to be associated with the heavier extremes of underground music. This is not crust or doom or metal of any kind. Maybe it is defined more by what it isn’t, rather than by what it is. Does that make sense?

In the end there is bleakness (I already said that), but it is not a cartoon. It is the real world as we see it in one of the cover photos: the squat black silhouette of a suburban house, its television aerial reaching to an oppressively lowering sky full of meaningless static. Somewhere in the blackness a single window is lit up, but it is barred by a security screen. This is the world we live in. This is No Anchor.

by René Schaefer