There is a distinctly melancholy luster to Melted's "Wraith." The song marks the mid-point of the So-Cal punk band's 2021 album Self Deflection, and forms a synecdoche for the album, as well as the band's career up to this point. A haunting visage of past pain and ambition, dissolving before the path of daybreak, seeing the shadows scurry defensively under the bed, as the curtains are thrown open and light conquers the room. Melted at one point exuded a typically kind of buzzy, carefree persona- a prefabricated exterior common to artists of their background- raw pink skin that became a scab with the abrasion of time- a defenseless shell that acquired enough scuffs and cracks that when they finally hatched from the hiatus of the COVID lockdowns, they resembled a gaunt and fully groan vulture as opposed to the fluffy fowl with a rotten attitude they went into the incubation of isolation as. A dark disposition now hangs over the band's sound like a decaying, moth-gnawed canopy, sagging dismally over a collapsed four-poster bed where a shade lies prone. Yet, somewhere there is a glint of light- an unsnuffed candle flickering by the bedside, a solitary sun ray peering between the slots of a cracked window shade, a residual glow clinging to a vanity mirror- a faint glimmer of hope, not much, but just wide enough to grasp. Taking this thin defiance in hand, the line "You don't haunt me anymore" from the aforementioned song gains the mustering strength of a steed, cautiously accelerating into a full gallop, bolstered by brash and hooky chords that punch through the heart of The Lillingtons and strike the dead center of Title Fight's dented bell. Trace the rings of distortion emanating from this collision and you will find yourself trading knife stricks with the glinting, gashing chords and biting, hooky lashers of "Who's To Blame," gazing down the gullet of the gravely hoarse, growl and Screeching Weasel-eque spit-shot of "Solace," and falling through the floor buckling, spiral sinkhole of "No Use," only to rise again, pulled up by the power-chord polished billhook and breathless, reaching retch of "Lower," a track that captures the daunting adrenaline rush of falling out a second story window and having to make a split-second decision about which side of your face you'd rather use to make your landing. Self Deflection is a ugly, surprisingly heavy album with a lot of heart- almost too much at times, as the thumping organ is hardly contented in its enclosure and seems ready to burst out like a xenomorph chest-burster, anxious to be born despite the pain and anxiety that awaits in the wider world beyond the dim safety of it pulmonary womb.
