Rough, raw, and aggressive. Muzzle is a sizzling pan of grease-fire distortion and rail-jumping, roller-coasting, garage rock grooves. I hardly listen to hardcore that doesn’t, at least tacitly, acknowledge the existence of Incantation, even though I realize that this causes me to miss out on a lot of stuff I know I’d otherwise fall chucks over chapeau for. Muzzle’s debut demo is one such record that I'm thankful I tore myself away from the latest
Kruelty EP long enough to check out. The release consists of three tracks of manic, basement quality-recording punk, with tainted Poison Idea riffs unspooling all of the floor, terminally infected with a psychedelic fungus that spreads willfully like an infection in an open wound. The mad dog howl of the vocal performances sounds like a man being tortured for information, metal clamps sinking their teeth into some soft, unmentionable part of his body, with copper wires running out the back and around the contact points of a car battery. It might sound painful, but he's clearly loving every second of it. Opening track, “In the Frame” begins with a squall of feedback before laying into a groove that sounds like what an old school, no-seatbelt, sans-airbag, demolisher derby feels like. “Muzzle” will hit the gas on your adrenal gland and not let go until it presses out every last drop of juice under its boot. And lastly, “Decrepit Bag” takes you on a detour of badly distended Black Flag waving riffs that weave and chide before striking for the kill.
SPHC usually donates its digital sales to the Baltimore Transgender Alliance, but for the remainder of June they will be remitting all of these digital sales from this release the Minnesota Freedom Fund (today is the 29th, you still have time!). You can learn more about Baltimore Transgender Alliance, a qualified non-profit,
here, and the Minnesota Freedom Fund,
here.
Want to buy a digital copy of Muzzle's demo, grab a copy from SPHC's Bandcamp,
here.
