(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Distorted Pony emerged in Los Angeles in 1992, when the “industrial” genre was beginning to break through the dense curtain of the world’s heavy metal capital. They were first revealed by the single Angel On A Haug/Concrete Bruises (Piece Of Mind) and the EP Work Makes Freedom (Bomp, 1991): Dora Jahr (bass) and David Uskovich (vocals and guitar), the founding members, along with Robert Hammer (guitar) and Theodore Jackson (percussion), play and sing like androids who’ve never taken a music lesson, yet produce apocalyptic harmonies of considerable impact. Fee Schedule, Sinner’s Prayer, and the other compositions on the EP sound like the soundtrack to a “Terminator” film.

The album Punishment Room (Bomp, 1992), steeped in atmospheres so heavy and gray as to make one nostalgic for British “dark punk,” is a collection of sadomasochistic rituals built on a subtle yet tightly calibrated background noise. The architecture of their “noise rock” is unique: on first listen the roar of guitar and bass forms a solid wall of noise, but in fact that menacing bass in the foreground—often carrying the melody instead of simply marking the rhythm—and those torrents of psychedelic detuning, coupled with a constant, piercing electronic distortion, end up having an effect more sinister than the average. The rhythm section benefits as well, always explosive thanks to the living jackhammer that is London May on drums (the new recruit), often doubled by a rhythm box, yet pulsing with minimalist breaks rather than punk vehemence—closer to Sonic Youth than to Black Flag. This doesn’t mean that each track lacks a melody (driven by the instruments, certainly not the voice), however deformed or abominable, at times even brushing against memories of Joy Division. Shrill, distorted, shouted vocals crown this ongoing and escalating delirium.
The dramatic force of this music therefore has few rivals. From the tribalism of Powerless to the hurricanes of distortion in Plague Bed, from the insistent, threatening Castration Anxiety to the heroic crescendo of Krank, this record is a fresco of the “cyberhuman’s” most unsettling impulses.
Distorted Pony reach seismic peaks of uncontrolled frenzy à la Big Black in the demonic nursery rhyme of Hod, and abyssal spasms of tension in the frantic cadences of Death In The Turnstile. They dive with the funk of Gut Bug into dizzying whirlpools of maniacal distortion and agonized screams, accelerating into a hypnotic raga. They intone the grotesque voodoobilly of Splinter, with the bass’s rough buzz and the guitar’s dissonant counterpoints steering the dance.
Everywhere panic and anguish spread: “Is it cold or am I hungry/ Are we fucking or are we praying/ Is it boredom or is it fear/ Does it hurt or am I alive?/ I'm not cold and I'm not lonely/ We're not fucking and we're not praying/ It's not boredom and it's not fear/ I am dead and I am lying here.”

On their second album, Instant Winner (Trance, 1994), the quintet lost some of the raw, explosive fury of their debut, but the musicians’ sharper technique allows each song to have at least a minimal structure. In reality, much of the album sounds like a natural extension of the first. The infernal attack of Dept Of Existence suggests how Sonic Youth might sound if their lineup featured two drills instead of two guitars. The riff is epic in nature, though the pace channels the triumph of the most primal instincts. Monstrous and earth-shaking, the riff of Smitten perfectly matches the advance of a panzer army. A vaguely rock-and-roll guitar and ultrasonic distortion duel in the fiery harmony of Lamb Stink.
Where the band takes a breath, a “comic” side emerges: traces of grotesque dance à la Pere Ubu (especially in the bass lines) surface in Big Sprawling Corrupt; Go Kart, after a scorching bass-and-scraped-guitar opening, launches into a kind of absurd ring-around-the-rosy; and in A Fine View From The Temple, after a long and nerve-wracking distortion, a powerful voodoobilly rises.
This more controlled momentum also allows their influences to shine: a cacophonous, rhythmic jamming à la Jimi Hendrix forms the backbone of Dollar Pizza; the slow, grunge Sparkle emerges at the intersection of Hendrix and the Melvins; the sounds of Fifty Cents Pizza resemble Don Caballero or Slint, though the track builds in a geometric crescendo; and Cripple (one of the most driving) is a tornado reminiscent of Girls Vs Boys, with the band’s typical tight guitar-and-bass phrasing.

Uskovich resurfaced as Red X Red M, which released Between Your Prayers and My Curses Our Kind May Triumph (2010), and as Distorminal DeadWax, which released Distorminal DeadWax (2012).