Refrigerator Heaven "Cream-Colored Casket" Cassette (Crooked Branch Collections, 2022)
Armed with nothing but a cheap distortion pedal, a half-busted tape machine, an electric toothbrush, and a children’s ‘thunder tube’ toy, the debut release by Refrigerator Heaven delivers discordant, bleak denouement nearly the whole way through with very little in the way of foreboding. From the wound ripped open harshness of the opener, to the airy claustrophobic isolation that follows, and then the impenetrable wall of crackle on the B side, this may be the most directly aggressive release yet for the label.
Named after the 1982 ‘child in peril’ classic by Massachusetts punk band The Freeze, Refrigerator Heaven’s thematic aspect is the severe consequences that often follow especially poor decision making, something that every single person reading this has personally experienced or witnessed firsthand.
While the title to this first release is primarily a nod to the original song (although there’s definitely something in the howling desolation of the second track that brings to mind a landfill at sundown, a half-buried Frigidaire in the distance..), there are of course as many bad decisions to make as there are stars in the sky, so future subject matter will be far from lacking.
Remember that often times the consequences of our poor decisions are negligible; but other times, they’re not.
C16 w/ risograph printed j-card. Edition of 50