I hadn't thought about them in some time, then two days after I dig this out on a whim, they turn up on Bandcamp with Go Dominator, a new single, the first in a couple of decades - albeit a new single which was recorded yonks ago but never released. It's as though the universe is trying to tell me something, something above and beyond that the time is right; because the time has always been right for World Domination. With each year that passes, these songs seem ever more relevant.
My first encounter was the phenomenal Asbestos Lead Asbestos, possibly one of the most wonderfully unpleasant songs ever committed to vinyl; although never really having had my finger on the pulse of anything, it was a couple of years old by the time I heard it and seemingly contemporary to the Acid Angels' Speed Speed Ecstacy which similarly named two substances in the title, and one of them twice, so Asbestos Lead Asbestos somehow felt like its dark toxic counterpart, at least to me.
I wasn't convinced by the album when first I heard it. I recognised the fucking horrible racket, but it seemed to lack the restraint which worked so well for Asbestos Lead Asbestos, taming the chaos just enough to suggest something in the vicinity of a funkier, noisier Public Image Limited around the time of Metal Box.
Anyway, I persisted. Initial impressions additionally suggested comparisons with the Pop Group, but where the Pop Group were overtly funky between the squalls of guitar noise, Let's Play Domination seems more like some primal rockabilly enterprise spinning horribly out of control. It's the bluesy inflections and the one foot somewhere in the Venn diagram with black music - dub, reggae, rap, disco and so on, hence covers of U-Roy, LL Cool J and Lipps Inc.'s Funkytown blasted out without any obvious trace of irony or sarcasm and so firmly distancing World Domination from fellow guitar noise merchants of the time.
You may notice I've already used both horrible and unpleasant as compliments, which is because it's hard to know what the fuck to do with that guitar sound. It's like a detuned power station throwing up, something with no equivalent in nature which has congealed in the grooves, a truly untamed beast which seems to contrast wildly with the tight but excitable rhythm and Keith Dobson's teen idol vocal, teen idol here meaning Ricky Nelson rather than Donny Osmond. The combination seems so perfect and simple that it's bewildering how no-one else thought to do it this way. There hasn't been much which has sounded quite like this album before or since, possibly because groups this violent and noisy rarely sound quite so happy about rubbing our faces in everything which is repulsive about human society right now, yet without simply adding to the shit mountain; and in Ghetto Queen, I'm not sure I've heard anything so beautiful which doesn't really communicate anything you would call a tune, just the jagged drone of electricity pylons fighting on the horizon in a world where the Cramps were actually the Swans, sort of.
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