Alternating between irresistibly anthemic energy and morose lethargy, Rationale is a lean record. The songs rarely stray north of two minutes and if you’re not watching the track list you’d be forgiven for letting them all blend into one. The guitars serve as a layer of scuzz to push Ned Russin‘s vocals to the fore, keys drop in and out to offer a little hook or back up the vocals here and there, and the rhythm section are tightly locked in with a minimum of mischief.
The album opens with ‘I Want To Be Invisible‘, gradually introducing the band before abandoning all pretence once Russin takes a deep breath and does what he does best. This is a vocal-centric album, and the delivery is amply impassioned. The vocals drone and sneer over the keys-driven songs and spit and roar when the guitars enter the fray, and it’s impeccably pulled off within the narrow musical scope of the record.
Always a band sitting on the edge of the unhinged and uncomfortable, Pissed Jeans have been silently stewing since the closing the cycle of their 2017 album Why Love Now. Produced alongside No wave artist Lydia Lunch, the album fully embraced elements of post-punk in its greasy self-critique of masculinity and male aggression. Seven years later, Half Divorced sees the band shrug off the No Wave and Post-Punk musical influences and step back towards their blend of DC hardcore punk, abrasive noise rock and trad punk alongside sardonic and barbed lyricism.
Pissed Jeans waste little to no time with album opener ‘Killing All The Wrong People’, high-tempo d-beat and blistering bassline drives the song forward with discordant guitar melodies introducing a sense of noisy danger from the get go. The chaotic ode to USHC continues on the sub two minute ‘Anti-Sapio’, bring a hefty skate punk chorus. That speaks to the album as a whole, with most of the twelve tracks on offer sitting somewhere between one and two minutes in length and favouring the unstable high-tempo punk and hardcore; singles ‘Cling to a Poisoned Dream’ and ‘Sixty-Two Thousand Dollars in Debt’, along with other tracks like ‘Alive With Hate’, ‘Seatbelt Alarm Silencer’ and Pink Lincolns cover ‘Monsters’ fully embracing classic USHC chops, very literally in the latter’s case.
Job For A Cowboy have never been a “one-note” band, constantly evolving their sound as a reflection of the maturation and expanding musical taste of band members. Their infamous 2005 EP, Doom, served as a cornerstone of early deathcore, yet they traded their roots for death metal in follow up album Genesis. But have since surpassed their boundaries into more modern, technical and progressive death metal throughout their back catalogue.
Fast forward to 2023, almost 9 years of silence from the iconic lineup have passed since their landmark record, Sun Eater, and hopes of a return have started to dwindle. That is until the release of bludgeoning and volatile first single, ‘The Agony Seeping Storm’, and announcement of follow-up album, Moon Healer, signals the re-emergence of Job For A Cowboy. Despite their resounding transformations in earlier work, Moon Healer doesn’t push their sound to new dizzying realms or reminisce on their much earlier albums but instead builds upon the foundations set in Sun Eater creating a multifaceted progressive death metal album akin to the likes of Cynic and Atheist. Although this direction may not be favourable amongst bread-and-butter listeners who prefer their death metal to sound like a tractor engine, their resurgence unleashed rapture amongst fans who jumped on the cowboy wagon at any time in their history.
Born out of the collective lived experience of those lucky enough to have crawled through the 1990’s and survived the onslaught of international traumas, post promise of progress, peace and prosperity, as we rang in the 21st century with a hopeful and dare-we-say-it naive optimism; Anti-Fun Propaganda prides itself as the current leading voice of reason, to the chaotic neutral territory most worldly-wise individuals flock to in moments of overwhelming exhaustion with the never ending validated pearl clutching, having heard the top atrocities of the day’s news cycles.
Never a band to shy away from political proclamations, venturing into discussions on gender and sexuality, as well as ruminating on the volatile times we haven’t been able to shake; one of Anti-Fun…’s most intriguing qualities lies in its juxtaposing sonically energising balm effect, considering the heaviness of the subject matter littered throughout its runtime, the perfect balance of potent juvenihilism is utterly fascinating, while also being fiercely entertaining and engaging.
Gen and the Degenerates have consistently packed their sound with a plethora of influences in an effort to present a united force of individualistic expression and liberty, which leaves us reminiscing enticing qualities of bands like, Juliette & The Licks tongue in cheek jubilations, Starbenders unrelenting hardness and the Lambrini Girls “no fucks given” truth saying attitude; the impressiveness of this album and the amount of effort laced in its preaching and teachings, is especially important to celebrate considering it’s G&D’s first full length studio album to their discography.
No strangers to a collaboration album, having worked with artists such as Uniform, Thou, Full Of Hell and Big Brave; Rhode Island’s boundary pushing duo The Body continue their consistent and relentless release schedule. This time around they find themselves teaming up with the post-industrial sonic sculptor Dis Fig, aka Felicia Chen, no stranger to boundary pushing within her own world of experimental electronica, warped DJ sets and noise projects (as well as a notable feature as vocalist for The Bug on 2020 album In Blue). With both acts being well respected in their scene’s, they make for a natural pairing, blending and pushing each other’s concepts of extremes for a truly unique and challenging project.
Orchards of a Futile Heaven lets its tendrils creep in slowly, opening track ‘Eternal Hours’ stirs to life with disembodied noise pulses at rhythmic intervals, low end bass hits and flourishes of cymbal splashes. Unintelligible vocal samples are chopped, warped and layered, soaked in effects and delay, curating an uneasy soundscape from the get go. The tension is a slow build, Dis Fig’s ethereal soft sung vocals juxtapose the abrasive elements of the instrumental and trademark pained vocal howls The Body are well known for. Its simultaneously somewhat distressing, yet hypnotic, which becomes a regular occurrence across the seven tracks.
A band entrenched in their sound yet one impossible to predict in terms of where their sound will go record to record? It sounds silly, but in Darkest Hours case, it makes perfect sense. Not content with plodding the same metallic hardcore floorboards with every release, they’ve ventured from cleaner, anthemic sounds a’la Killswitch Engage to gritty, heavy as hell chaotic hardcore that echoes Converge in the span of a few albums. Yet, at the same time, whenever you hear their work, there’s something about it that makes it instantly recognisable as the Washington D.C natives.
While sonically you’ve never been too sure what you’re going to get, there’s elements of the bands sound that remain constant. John Henry’s distinctive barks, unabashed At The Gates guitar worship and drumming that tattoos itself into the back of your skull. Seven years is the biggest gap the band have ever had between original releases (There was a Live in Lockdown album in 2022) so while expectations were high, people also didn’t know what to expect. Thankfully, the extra time has paid off as the result is a record that seems to take influence and inspiration from moments in time all across the bands career. There’s shades of the brutal grind of Godless Prophets & The Migrant Fauna combined with the massive choruses and hooky guitars found on Deliver Us across the whole of Perpetual | Terminal.
