Drip-Fed doesn't bring the rock to you in the form of beads and dewdrops; they'll bring it all down on you like a waterfall. The Austin band has just released their second LP Kill The Buzz, the first noticeable difference between it and their previous, self-titled album is its intensity. You are just getting that much more Drip-Fed flavor on this release, and it comes at you faster and fiercer than ever before. Drip-fed describes themselves as a hardcore band, which is reasonable. I'm not going to argue with them. Even given that conceit, they're hard to place in the greater spectrum of punk extremity.
There is a noticeable country twang to a lot of the guitar work on Kill the Buzz that feels downright subtle in its tendency towards folky throwback. Especially, when you think of some of the straight-up Credence Clear Water Revival renaissance chord progressions that powered their previous effort. On their second album through, the country drawl in the guitar work is really more of a suggested, rather than a commanding, presence or quality- stipping out the pokey parlance but leaving the aggrievement and swagger. The spur-heeled stomp and fraying, cracked leather grooves of "Move Right Through Me" is a good example of this, where hollering southern guitar leads sping up like sparkling spurts of raw crude to lubricate the track's self-mutilating stumble and spiral. On Kill the Buzz, Drip-Fed comes a lot closer to Annihilation Time with the way that they employ light country motifs and the genre's crushing tendency toward inebriation enabled, grievance peddling from a vantage point parallel with a stained motel carpet, which they use to give purpose and perspective to their own radioactive, emotional meltdowns. Then there are the grunge parts.
If putting a leather fringe jacket on over a Trash Talk cut-off wasn't eyebrow-raising enough, Drip-Fed also manages to seamlessly wind Pearl Jam worthy, Billboard Alternative Chart-topping, guitar melodies into these tracks, which shouldn't work, but totally does. Like the bubbling, bad-blood blues of "Tone Deaf" or the watershed-cracking rush of "Freak Show." Part of what makes the Alt-Nation aping portions of these tracks more palatable is the fact that these grunge parts are filtered through post-hardcore and '90s emo sensibilities, similar to the way that Citizen's grunge metamorphism occured, although on Kill the Buzz, the mix is properly shot through with the right dose of adrenaline and simmering resentment.
"Moonlighting" will give you the feeling that you've caught Sunny Day Real Estate on a very bad day, and "Wearing a Wire" sounds like Hot Water Music decided to take a buggy ride during a state fair, got bored in route and opted to flip the cart, start it on fire, and boil the horses for lunchmeat.
Kill the Buzz is an album that is weighty with inspiration and ambition, that somehow manages to stay on its feet and moving at full speed without feeling off-balance or burdened by its oddly-shaped magnitude. It feels like the first Kvelertak album in that respect. It's so strictly sculpted by its allegiance to its own twisted gallery of muses that it can't help but reach perfection when judged on its own terms. Something which I am more than happy to do.
