Scizzorman share new album 'HOW TO GET YOUR LIFE RIGHT WITH WHAT’S LEFT'

There is something wonderfully unruly about Scizzorman’s HOW TO GET YOUR LIFE RIGHT WITH WHAT’S LEFT. After stepping away during the post-pandemic period and emerging from a bout of writer’s block, the Australian alternative funk-rock and psychedelic outfit return with a seven-track album that seems determined to resist every obvious definition. Across just over 30 minutes, the band move between funk, glam, psychedelia, stoner rock, swamp blues and trip-hop influenced ambience, creating a colourful musical world where unpredictability becomes part of the appeal. This is an album that does not simply ask to be heard, it asks the listener to surrender to its peculiar logic.

At the heart of Scizzorman’s sound is drummer and vocalist Terry J Vinci, whose eccentric lyrical perspective gives the record much of its personality. His observations, anecdotes and existential detours can be outrageous, humorous and deliberately strange, but beneath the surrealism is a clear fascination with the absurdities of contemporary life. Cody Robson’s bass provides a smooth and often funky foundation, while Stewart Herbertson’s guitar and synthesizer work continually alters the album’s landscape. Their contributions allow the songs to veer from swaggering rock to psychedelic exploration without losing the sense that everything belongs to the same eccentric universe.

The album’s greatest strength is its refusal to settle. The Lesser-known (Pts 1-3) establishes an appetite for experimentation, while tracks such as The Next Gen Is Broken and Narcissistic Nymphs Of The New Age suggest a band having considerable fun with both language and social observation. Elsewhere, Cavalcades and The Great Unknown broaden the record’s psychedelic horizons, while Mystical Yeast and Get With The Program reinforce Scizzorman’s ability to combine absurdity with genuine musical craft. There are obvious echoes of adventurous artists such as Frank Zappa, Talking Heads, David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix, alongside the funk-rock energy of Red Hot Chili Peppers, but Scizzorman absorb these influences rather than simply reproduce them.

What makes the record particularly engaging is the way its disparate elements are held together by a strong sense of groove and character. The production and mix, shaped by seasoned sound engineer Adrian Vinci, allow the guitars, synthesizers, bass and vocals to occupy their own distinctive spaces while preserving the album’s deliberately unruly personality. Rather than feeling like a collection of unrelated stylistic experiments, the seven tracks gradually reveal themselves as parts of the same strange journey. The result is a record that can be playful one moment, heavy the next and unexpectedly atmospheric after that.

Ultimately, HOW TO GET YOUR LIFE RIGHT WITH WHAT’S LEFT succeeds because Scizzorman understand that music can be both entertaining and intellectually restless. Their response to an increasingly dystopian world is not to offer easy answers, but to question assumptions, embrace the bizarre and encourage listeners to look at the present from a slightly different angle. It is short, adventurous and packed with ideas, with enough musical variety to reward repeated listening. Scizzorman may not have discovered a conventional route to getting life right, but they have certainly found an entertaining way to make sense of what is left.

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