Album Review: Ruckus - Ruckus

It's very rare to hear a band with a barrel-aged Bowery punk vintage sound these days- so rare that I frankly thought this was a recovered session tape from an early In the Red co-signed troop of slag-heads attempting one last pull off an already entirely ashed career. But would you believe this is really a bunch of NYC-by-way-of-Boston hardcore dudes attempting to rekindle the city's roots with little more than a bad attitude, a handful of hacksaw riffs, and a foggy memory of a shadow world of culture-rich slums slicked over and streamlined into dull strips of social mausoleums comprised of vacant tax-write-offs, tourist traps, and vintage-upcycling boutiques (also existing primarily for tax purposes). Ruckus's 12" self-titled is entirely decoupled from the city that is, as a revelation of what was, a draft of stale beer with a couple of snipes floating in it, that while bearing no nutritional value, pulls the mind down a drift of bitter nostalgia to float down the gutter of good tidings like a stream of sick, summoned by the galling purge of last night's libations. An unrestrained and hardy gamble of half-recollected depositions from a rash, degenerate mingling that started with a bottle of aberrant abandon, a hitched ride downtown, and a determined lack of remorse, with the premeditated ambition to spend down every dime in your pocket just to see what the night will furnish in return. It's like the soundtrack to some second-hand studio exploitation flick, where misrule is the only rule at an urban high school, the water fountains are filled kegs of lite beer, the principal is in deep debt to the mob, nerds run DARPA-funded psychological experiments on classroom pets, and a ragtag crew of punks keep the authorities in line- a story of distinguished debauchery, grainy lo-fi affairs, and kicking school dances turned riot that culminates with the captain of the football team coming out as gay, the head cheerleader hooking up with a 6-foot NIMH rat, and the whole school having an orgy on the quad before the army calls in an airstrike and the credits roll. The End...? A burnt hand punches through the still-burning limestone and concrete rubble of the flattened former learning institution, gripping a still partially intact Gibson Flying V just before the final fade-out. Maybe not... But you'll never know. The ushers are clearing the theater seats of anyone who didn't pay for the double feature (next showing Abel Ferrara's Driller Killer), and you've gotta mosey. The sequels will all be direct-to-video and/or be lost in a warehouse fire. But man, that soundtrack will live on in your head forever, an amp-fed Ruckus whose resounding echo can't be suppressed by the temperance of time, or your real life's demands for moderation. Remember, it's always hot in the city, and if you know you're way, you can always tag along on a night cruise through these steaming, love-sick streets in search of satisfaction.

Point blank in your ear baby! (Under The Gun Records)

Interview: The Eradicator

Listen up, pusshead! You ain't nobody unless you're somebody on the squash court! It is the ultimate game of manly endurance, speed, agility, and intelligence. A test of will and fortitude on a magnitude that rivals the myths of ancient gods. Two men enter the court; one man leaves... and shortly thereafter, the other man, having declared himself the victor, also hits the showers. Sure, it's the same showers that the loser is using, and yeah, he may have to ask to borrow a towel and some deodorant from the loser, and he might have forgotten his wallet so he can't pay for a cab or the train and will be hoofing it back to the office that morning, but that just makes the triumph all the sweeter. The stains on his collar and in the pits of his suit jacket when he arrives in the lobby of his employer's building are the laurel rings of a champion, and no one can erase their golden glory- as much as one might try with a Shout stick or other name-brand stain remover. No one knows the perspiration of perseverance and the stink of success better than The Eradicator, aka Andy Slania, the demon of the D Squash Ladder, banshee of the back courts, the phantom of the point-a-rally, the shaitan of sweat- in short, he's your worst nightmare... and the latest guest on this podcast!

Check out The Eradicator's latest LP You Can Hate The Eradicator: 

Album Review: Sistema de Entretenimiento - Arcade Punk

Chongqing, China, one of the largest municipal districts in the world, may rightfully have laid claim to the title of Cyberpunk Capital, earned through its advanced technical sector and neon-future landscapes, but the soundtrack of the nigh-approaching total-techno dominion is transmitting across sea and air, out of the leaky boiler rooms and dank basement dens of Barcelona. It's the future, baby! ...of a distant past. What Spanish FM synthesis and electro-punks Sistema de Entretenimiento are excavating are already decayed and tarnished remnants of tomorrow in the ashes of today. Squaring the freshly freed angst of the post-Franco '80s into a pixelated, soft-tooth buzzsaw of oscillating lo-fi disco puntazos, they construct with sound a virtual vision of the 21st century from the vantage point of far-flung yesteryear that is more advanced and exciting than the one we find ourselves mired in the depths of, but nevertheless, just as desperate and disquieting. A prophetic fever of fortress-like, chrome-gleaming skyscrapers so tall that they literally pierce through to the void of space and are in constant threat of colliding with satellites; widespread commercially available cybernetic anatomical augmentations and back-alley butchers licensed to install them for bottom-barrel prices; rogue killer androids; flying cars; android spouses and electric sheep- their oneiric implications nearer and auspicious promises farther away today than they were when the now-diseased circulars of mass-market paperbacks and VHS OVAs articulated their conceivable emergence- at least on the Western half of the globe. I guess that's why EPs like Arcade Punk seem so prescient; they're paving the night with percolating neon-noise-tinted excess in anticipation of a future that will never arrive, but is somehow already receding in the rear-view mirror.

The United States has the highest carceral rate of any country in the world, and yet Prison Records is based in Spain. Curious...

Album Review: Gun - Neo Notown

It's hard to overstate the mythic position that guns have within the contemporary imagination. Sources of power and dispensers of fear, they are implements that set their sights on the hinge points of history, striking them and spinning them on their axis; an exchange of smoke and blood in incalculable magnitudes; the trajectory of countless pivotal, piercing brass streaks tear through the tomes of time like a bullet through butterfly wings, rewriting the course of human affairs in their wake. One of the enduring legacies of the Mongol incursion into Europe, it was the gun that changed the tides of the Sengoku period when Portuguese traders washed up on the Southern rim of the Japanese archipelago, bringing this violent innovation full circle and changing the nature of conquest in East Asia 400 years after gunpowder was introduced to the West by the great horde. Every revolution in the modern era has leaned on this tool as both agency and arsenal, justice and deliverance, while every uprising that has seen itself smothered was choked out in a haze of hot, chalky blue residue coughed out by the same. Then there is America's specific relationship to these instruments of grandiose annihilation, a pillar and totem of popular political strength; they mostly serve as playthings for the socially marginal and declassed for performing toothless tantrums in provincial wooded areas, and as the means for settling petty grudges and satisfying venomous resentments in a litany of tragedies recounted across timelines and news feeds, landing in the lap of the public with little more than a resigned sigh. Few would aver to embody such a disputatious and complex legacy, or don such a heritage of revolution and ruin by choice, and yet New York City tetrad Gun have proven so bold. On their second LP, Neo Notown, the group compresses their insurgent energy into a progressive message of hope broadcast across a desaturated techno-surveillance dystopia, not unlike the Big Apple of present-day, or any other collapsing megacity one can find themselves slowly crushed by across the globe. A jet-set soundtrack that twists early '00s alt metal, industrial rock, noise punk, and funk into a riffled cylinder of steel by which to discharge a burst of pure adrenaline to your cortex in a colorful splash of heat-ignited, reactive rebellion. They sweep and stun from the outset on the groove-swagger slugfest opener and title track, before bouncing the turnstile and grinding the rails on "Laser Gun," directing fluctuating phaser fields of pitch-shifting guitar fluctuations to power a Cypress Hill-summiting royal with a panged, determined, and desperate trust in the direction of Stabbing Westward. Wacked-out grooves rebound off brick facades, flickering streetlights, and past spying doorway portals on the clandestine cylinder slide and delayed sizzling payload of "Bullet Town," while "Walking on the Sun" sprays straight from the hip, letting the trigger slip as they carve a full-metal manifesto in the air, bars whirling in a ballet of carnage like spent cases spinning south of heaven, all while grooves claw at the seams of sonic propriety, prying away the varnish in a torquing separation of flesh from its fetters. "Star-Crossed Fighters" brings a knife to the fray, one large and sharp enough to rive the roof clean off a Buick, surprising the interior of the cabin, and your skull, with a glistening bath of uninvited sunshine, a high point which leaves room for the downshifting reprieve of "The Armory" to follow. Once fully recharged and resupplied, Gun takes aim and empties the clip on "Ready, Set, Action!" - a rich and chewy serving of lead salad with a side of gut-ripping riffs and stomp-steady grooves that will reduce the brawn of the unworthy to a pliable pulp, a fine-grain pâté suitable for the palate of the discerning sewer-dwelling vermin, it is a triumph that is preceded by a sweeping procession of closer "Victory" a track that rolls over the vanquished with light-footed, moonwalking grooves and a Richter scale-busting beat. You've heard voices of previous generations tell you to load up on guns and bring your friends; well, presently, you and your pals just need one to seize the day, and this is it- point-blank and in your face. Fill your hands, you son of a bitch, and show what grit you've got to give! Neo Notown or bust! 

Interview: The Arrivals

If you could find something you love in your formative years and find a way to keep doing it for 30-plus years, wouldn't you? Not many people are so lucky, but Dave Marriman of Chicago punk pillars The Arrivals certainly is. He and his crew have been keeping steady and remaining reliably prescient all these years, and have recently (as of this spring) managed to release their 5th LP, Payload. You may wonder why it's been 16 years since their last album, Volatile Molotov, and the simple answer is that the timing just wasn't right, until it was... In Dave's own words, and summing up the ethos of the band, "If it's not fun, fuck it!" Truly an idiom to ideate on next time you find yourself running behind according to someone else's clock. They don't have any Chicago dates to celebrate the album release on the books yet, but when they do, you can bet I'll be there (and hope you will be too!). In the meantime, enjoy this conversation between Dave and me:

 

You can find Payload out on Recess Records here: 

Album Review: Emma Aibara - u:phobia

Generally, escapism is viewed dimly in society- at least it was for our parents and older siblings. Now they do it too and just avoid conversations that tend to unearth the guilt they harbor while mired in a zombifying pool of blue light ever-present due to a screen addiction, or their mental absence while they cling to the tail of some projected fantasy of success or belonging, or emotional inaccessibility due to overcommitment to a hobby that might as well be a second career (but which doesn't pay the bills), or maybe they just have a good old-fashioned substance abuse conundrum, often, but not always, revolving around the compulsive consumption of some formerly sanctioned narcotic which now can be bought over the counter in exaggerated concentrations evidently cultivated to induce immediate psychological break in those who gulp them down. Everyone is running from something these days- bad economy, bad relationships, worsening prospects- but most of all, they're fleeing themselves, because in every bad situation, there is necessarily an observing subject whose conscious experience of it, and recognition of it, qualifies it as bad. And most people, being one of said people, like nearly everyone around them, can do shit all to make a difference on their own- where there is a fire that you can't put out, the most logical next step is to look for an exit, the nearest escape hatch, pry it open and drop out of sight. I don't know what Japanese, now ported to America, digital-sound artist Emma Aibara is ducking, cutting, and cantering to avoid, but I feel the angst and instinct to evade one's fate on her LP u:phobia like it was a knife pointed at my own throat. The synthesized heroine framed by the album, a projection of Aibara herself, is much like a partially formed butterfly struggling to free itself from the chamber of a cocoon that seems to be getting tighter, and more anaerobic the longer she gestates in its interior, and who runs the risk of being digested by the thieving stagnant ambiance of her crystalline cell- where it should be fortifying her future, it has become a straitjacket, repressing the exigency of her transformation. Flight is the only option, even on stunted and malformed wings, even where the key to one's salvation is tied to a kite of delusion; when the dilemma is survival or suffocation, escape is sine qua non. To that effect, sound serves as saving-grace: digital-hardcore grooves and loops collide in glancing scrapes off of cracked and shard-yielding percussion; long corridors of syncing effects suddenly shorten and invert their referential dimensions, leaving the listener uncertain as to the nadir and the direction in which gravity is compelling them; fae-formulated harmonizations narrowly evade being clipped by flourishes of shrapnel from caustically kaleidoscopic busts of acerbic beats; and overheated sequences scald and liquefy supple human hardware like a flash flow of magma carbonizing and dissolving the superfluous padding of the architecture of the soul's prison and allowing flitting pearls of internal light to squeeze through the open cracks and ascend heavenward. What shadows Emma Aibara is staying a heel and a jump ahead of is not clear from my vantage point, but I can see the crest of dawn illuminating the path before her. I know not where she is absconding, only that wherever she is headed, I want to be there too. I don't know what Japanese, now ported to America, digital-sound artist Emma Aibara is ducking, cutting, and cantering to avoid, but I feel the angst and instinct to evade one's fate on her LP u:phobia like it was a knife pointed at my own throat. The synthesized herione framed by the album, a projection of Aibara herself, is much like a partially formed butterfly struggling to free itself from the chamber of a cocoon that seems to be getting tighter, and more anaerobic the longer she gestates in its interior, and who runs the risk of being digested by the thieving stagnant ambiance of her crystalline cell- where it should be fortifying her future, it has become a straitjacket, repressing the exigency of her transformation. Flight is the only option, even on stunted and malformed wings, even where the key to one's salvation is tied to a kite of delusion; when the dilemma is survival or suffocation, escape is sine qua non. To that effect sound serves as savior, digital-hardcore riffs and loops collide in glancing scrapes off of cracked and shard-yielding percussion; long corridors of syncing effects suddenly shorten and invert their referencial dimentions, leaving the listener uncertain as to the nadir and the direction in which gravity is compelling them; fae-formulated harmonizations narrowly evade being clipped by flourishes of shrapnel from caustically kaleidoscopic busts of acerbic beats; and overheated sequences scald and liquefy supple human hardware like a flash flow of magma carbonizing and dissolving the soft superfluous junk of the architecture of the soul's prison and allowing flitting pearls of internal light to squeeze through the open cracks and ascend heavenward. What shadows Emma Aibara is staying a heel and a jump ahead of is not clear from my vantage point, but I can see the crest of dawn illuminating the path before her. I know not where she is absconding, only that wherever she is headed, I want to be there too.

Album Review: Gust - Gust

I had this one on my desk for a while-12 years, actually- during which time it mostly served as a coaster and mantel to prop up a picture of myself and bae (Hi, honey!). In all that time I didn't really feel like I needed to hear it because, in many ways, I already did. There was a big wave of crust/black metal/noise rock hybrids during the early '10s who all seemed to have the same mission: to fuck with other people's vibes- scare American Apparel shoppers and generally rip up the mood at large, millennial gatherings. Bands like Full of Hell, Trap Them, and Nails pretty much existed as sonic-psychological ordnance, deployed by hipsters against other hipsters, and Southern Lord was one of the main dealers of the era. But now that I've finally had a taste, I'm glad that I actually gave Gust's self-titled LP a listen, because it is a lot of fun, and it was quite the gay little jaunt going back and wallowing in some of the simply atrocious (non-derogatory) aura that was in circulation during the previous decade. The fast-pass, no-bull description of Gust on this, their debut LP and first proper studio recording, is withering d-beat and wind-tunnel hardcore inspired by those wrathfully whimsical metalcore minstrels Converge and Cursed. They're a Swedish band, and they live up to the pedigree that a cadre of crusts hailing from those parts implies, and pretty much check all the boxes for a group that started out doing straight crusty d-beat but eventually hazarded onto the logic that a bigger, cleaner, and more Boatright-y sound (Brad literally produced the record) could go farther and inflict more damage on adversaries and innocent bystanders alike- ruthless, loud, and, lest we forget, misanthropic. If you've had a bad day (like I do every day), this will scratch your itch, with a little more acidic atmosphere and black-metal snarl than your average band of punk crushers, even of the same milieu. Some might argue that this is just warmed-over Baptist grey water... and they have a point, but Gust's antireligious, antiauthoritarian swill is still more delicious and hits harder than many groups that came after them, and being absolutely novel isn't nearly as important with hardcore and extreme metal bands as whether or not they deliver the goods- ie, crushing beats, epic riffs, soul-rending grooves, and vocals that transmit a sense of unrestrained human anguish. In that case, it's all here. Take it in and let the bad times roll.

Technically, Southern West Coast Lord. 

Album Review: C.L.S.M. - Infinity Shit

I was thinking the other day about how stone-cold spectacular it was to see Coliseum and United Nations play at the Sub T in support of the former's LP Anxiety's Kiss, declaredly their final album back in 2015. The intensity of both their performances is something of a core memory at this point, especially the manner in which Ryan Patterson would kinetically manifest the emotions and intentions behind each song in his set to narrow the circumspection of the audience while approximating the dread of being a raccoon facing off against an oncoming train- guy has a talent for making one fear for their splatability. Coliseum cracked and crumbled after that tour, and Ryan moved on to his pure post-punk project Fotocrime. It was bittersweet to bid the group farewell, but I'm not one to begrudge an artist for shifting focus, even if their choice of direction leads us down divergent paths. As for Fotocrime, it affects me about as much as the mating habits of endangered Andean condors- interesting but ultimately inconsequential to my life. Imagine my surprise when I looked up old Battledome-C on a whim, only to learn that they had constructed a new arena in which to display their prowess and spill their carnage, a retcon back to the cockcrow of their conception, indecently identified as Infinity Shit and released in 2023. I'm somewhat shocked that Ryan would claw back his declaration that Anxiety's Kiss was the group's parting buss, but seeing how he's now calling the band C.L.S.M., I guess this is more of a reincarnation than a reunion- a reversion to a simplified structure, reminiscent of a prior instantiation, in order to ignite a freshly ascendent blaze of destiny. Back in the mid-'00s, when highly commercial third-wave emo and pop-punk were at their zenith, there was more or less an undercurrent of backlash within the punk scene that manifested in a consistent outflow of d-beat, crust, and gritty hardcore that offered the nation's youth a more caustic alternative to the outwardly docile, consumer-friendly sense of alienation and punk rock they could purchase at the mall. Coliseum, in its original infleshed epitome, was a byproduct of this schism. This sinfully ugly trio of Louisville punks headbutted their way out of the Midwest with their lurching blend of sludge metal, roadhouse country-blues, and bloody-knuckled hardcore, and helped to bring the skuffed metallic punk hybrids of the early-to-mid '90s into the new millennium along with a devastated earnestness that their big-city peers would take almost a decade to catch up to. Infinity Shit is eternally bestial, far more so than the majority of the group's catalog, save their debut, with in particular Ryan sounding like a caiman crammed full of amphetamines to the point where its overheated snap-box of brain has discovered how to mimic the human tongue, or at least pull off a half-blinkered parodic impression of Jaz Coleman after drinking a grail brimming with Lemmy's blood. Tracks like "Dehydrated Flesh of the Bourgeoisie," "Trash the Human Race," and "Alchemical Terrorism" place a premium on cyclonic grooves that penetrate body cavities, vibrate, jostle, and partically liquify organs, and involuntarily convert toe-tapping into tile-splintering stomps, taking less of an indirect Buñuelian path to insulting the Burghers, resolving to simply spit at them for being ugly parasites and wishing to stack their bodies as the planks and foundation of a new world. Ominous in its intentions, the beatdown is without pause, fetting one bitter rebuke to the next in a cacophonic catena of punk-metal mendacity towards a world that more and more resembles a moral and intellectual cesspool, a condemned noetical superfund site, each day we wake into it. The effluent of iniquity flows eternally, as does the fury to combat it. Infinity Shit is C.L.S.M.'s rousing return to a campaign against the corruption that besets this world. 

20/23 is not perfect vision, but it's good enough for Equal Vision. 

Album Review: Cold Summer - Den Umständen Entsprechend

It's getting to feel like summer out there- the sun is bearing down, and the swelter is soaking in, cooking your innards like a sack of giblets crammed in the body cavity of a Thanksgiving turkey (which they kinda are anyway). What are you going to do to avoid heat stroke? What's the plan? Pull the tab on a cold one and sit under a fan? Guzzle some gazpacho? Listen to Cold Summer's Den Umständen Entsprechend EP... I'm not sure how that's going to help, but I'm with you in spirit. Germany's Cold Summer certainly isn't known for their abundance of "chill"; if anything, I'd describe them as thoroughly overheated- from the cleaving, forge-fire maim and inductive sear of their desperately distorted guitar churn, to the intemperate and irascible snarl of the percussion section's predatory and indiscreet hunt for vulnerable junctures through which it can funnel its skin-rending punch, or the itchy angst and coarse logic of the vocals, which scrapes and chisels around the ears like a block of ice that someone is attempting to sculpt into a moody effigy but more transparently using as a glossy sponge for their agitation, the apparent abandonment becoming more severe with each hewing hack they chew from the block. It's a mixture of compulsion, conviction, violence, and cool sneering confidence that will boil the fat off your chassis and leave behind only a clammy ossature of recalcitrance and a rat's nest of nerves slung around it like a handmade scarf. Nothing beats a heat wave like a cold surge of aggression.

Its Eleven Records (11:08 pm to be exact) / Kink Records (get your head out of the gutter!)

Interview: Heavy Metal Chess Club

Courtesy of We're Trying Records

The other day I was listening to an interview with a Japanese musician, and she was describing her experience in her high school's band club. To give perspective on the topic to her interviewer, she brought up K-On! only to wipe the slate moments later with the clarification that her experience was "nothing like that." No snacks. Full practice room. You had to practice every day, and when you did play for the club, everyone judged you. This was her experience, and yeah, on balance, watching K-On! sounds a good deal more pleasurable than actually doing the extracurricular that inspired it... I'd wager the closest you could ever come to such an experience in this life is joining a DIY band in the United States. There is still some judgment, sure, and it's still a major time commitment, but there are also tons of snacks and opportunities to simply chill. You'll also probably produce some recordings and play some shows that you can be proud of for the rest of your life, as well as make some lifelong compatriots to boot. Keiongaku certainly has a future, just not where you'd expect...

So if you're going to have an extracurricular that consumes, disrupts, and alters your life, for better and for worse, but mostly for the better, then you might as well start a band with your buds... sort of like Henry from Heavy Metal Chess Club did. Now Henry and his pals don't throw horns and rip power chords in honor of the dark lord, and our main man in particular is no Bobby Fischer, but everything else about them seems faithful to the core conciets of DIY as their music is a perfect synecdoche of life's convoluted trails converging at intersecting epiphanies in the wild fields of youth, sodded in the soil of error and nurtured in murky flash floods of pensive perspicuity. They might not be true to their name, but they are certainly brimming with concrete existential observations, engaged in probing schematic interpretations of the world, managing to be loud in inquiry, and quiet in conclusion, and they have a new LP called I Think It'll Haunt Me Forever out on We're Trying Records, which is worth an awful lot in my humble opinion. Get to know Henry and his band below, and don't forget to grab some taiyaki and tea before heading to the basement to jam with your crew.

Introduce yourselves. Who is in the band, what do they play, how did they come to be in the band, and what are their rider stipulations?

My name's Henry, I normally say "I play guitar and yell." I started writing songs in high school and formed a band when I got to college. For the past year or so now the band's included Connor on drums. His band Melon Husk from Colorado played with us a couple of years ago, we reconnected at a new year's party, and got closer after he transferred to Drexel (where we all go to school) following UArts closing. Will's on bass, I kinda knew him through Connor and also just kinda being around, another UArts to Drexel guy. We saw each other at shows and got along really well and we really jive energetically when we play together. Gray's the last one on lead guitar, we did a little tour in August of last year and I needed a guitarist for it, I had seen his band Exit 109 before and really liked them and knew he was going to be in Philly over that summer so I asked him to join us for that run and he clicked really well with us. He played his first show with us on just a few days' notice, and wasn't even able to make a practice so our first time playing with him was on stage and it went perfectly. They're all a blast to play and hang out with. We've never had a rider, but it would probably include beer.

What were your goals headed into making I Think It’ll Haunt Me Forever, and were they achieved?

I never intended for this to be the only album we do, in fact I'm super energized to get working on another record as soon as possible, but I wanted to put something out where if it was the only full length album we released, I would be content with that. There were a lot of times I acted as if this was the only album we'd do. The perfectionist in me can point out a lot of things I wish were different about it, but if this band were to cease to exist tomorrow, I would be happy with what we did with this record. That being said I do hope to one-up it next time around.

The title for the album comes from a poem recited in the track "Christmas Lights." What is the meaning behind this passage, how does it fit into other themes on the album, and how was it that a line from this poem became the title of the album?

For most of the time this album was being written I was sold on this being a self titled album. I'm not quite sure how to describe this but I don't think a whole lot when I write lyrics. I like to say that they mean things on a macro scale, not a micro scale. I could tell you what a song is about more or less but not most individual lines. I see a lot of things in my life in relation to being "scared." I'm anxious and shy and I fuck up a lot, and I'm scared of fucking up more. Persistence in spite of this fear is a skill I've developed as I've become a young adult. I'm scared of fucking up? Well, I've already fucked up, I can learn from that. There's stuff that I think might haunt me forever. I'm young and dramatic, maybe it won't "haunt" me but it'll probably stick around somehow. So will the fear, and the anxiety and all that. You can't be brave if you're not afraid, you can't learn and grow unless you fail. I'm not too sure how to tie that all up but those are the general thoughts I have around the title, I think it ties the themes of what I write together.

You have a very compelling, quiet dynamic on this album. How do you feel the juxtaposition of reflection and fury draws out the themes and thought processes behind your work?

The loud/quiet dynamic is something the bands I listened to growing up were very good at, Pixies, and Smashing Pumpkins being the big two. I see the louder more explosive parts of our songs as incredible cathartic and that's what I like about them most, it's a bit of a balancing act, something to build up to I don't think the yelling and screaming should be the whole thing. I don't think that hits as hard. I think you need softer more introspective moments to complement and build up to the moments of explosive catharsis. 

Who are some of your favorite scream vocalists, and do they have any impact on the way more aggressive vocal styles are deployed on this album?

I was really inspired by Jack Senff's vocals from Merchant Ships and Midwest Pen Pals, also stuff like early Pdaddy, Old Gray, and I was listening to a ton of Foxing's self titled when I was writing some of these songs, I was definitely inspired by some of Conor Murphy/Eric Hudson's more aggressive vocal performances throughout Foxing's discography.

Were any of you members of the chess club in high school?

I don't think so? Connor's been reading Gotham Chess' chess book, I've played against Connor and Will before. I'm quite bad.

What is the wisest, most far-sighted plan you have ever carried out, ie When was the last time you were really playing 4D chess?

I bought a cheap mini-van of Facebook marketplace so we could start touring and playing more regional shows. For a while I was like "that was stupid" since it was a really big purchase for me. Since then it's actually been really convenient to have a paid for vehicle thats got a lot of space, even if it is sort of a piece of crap. Getting it cheap and not financing it was the wiser part of that choice.

Who is playing clarinet on "Squids" and what does SpongeBob’s long-suffering neighbor have to do with this track?

That's a Saxophone actually, my buddy Charlie's playing it and you can hear it at the end of Christmas Lights too. Squidward has nothing to do with "Squids" but maybe he should have. I really liked the additional horns/piano we added to the record it filled out a lot more space than I thought it would.

Who is "Michael," and what is it that he is doing that is "Gross"?

I play a game called Balatro, when I started I swore that we'd make the first emo song that had a Balatro reference as it's titled. The title is referencing a card in the game called "Gros Michel" which is in turn referencing the real life thing. The card has an image of a banana on it and using it unlocks a card called "Cavendish." At the end of the day it's a long winded banana reference.

What dirty deeds inspired "Sweaty Palms / Bloody Hands"?

Honestly nothing in particular, I came up with the riff first and knew I wanted the song to be a bit heavier. The imagery of cleaning blood out of a floor came to mind and I leaned into that when writing lyrics.

What are your favorite spectator sports, ie sports that you watch but don't play? Real and/or figurative.

I love baseball! I played when I was really little but I wasn't a very athletic kid. I think it's a well paced game and the dork in me enjoys the stats-heavy side of it. 

The cover art is pretty busy. Are those equations, or are you diagramming a detective show's plot? Please explain what is going on in this image.

This was my thermodynamics midterm that my friend cut up and collaged. I think I got a 70 something on it?

When was the last time you built a sandcastle, and what are you most afraid that the ocean/time will wash away before you are finished with it?

When I was a little kid I saw some older kids making a sand castle on the beach and I asked them to help work on it. I was some single digit age and have no idea how old these other kids might have been but it seemed like an awesome sand castle and I wanted in on it. They let me play with them and I think about it more than you'd think. I think there's a lot of beauty in things being temporary, as much as there is pain. Things can serve a purpose and when their purpose is done they don't need to be around anymore. Relationships, emotions, tv shows, sand castles, there's a lot of pain in endings but there's purpose and beauty in there too. I remember writing that song feeling like people would always get sick of me after a while and none of my relationships would last. Its a sucky feeling but that type of stuff comes and goes, people play a part in your life, and you in theirs, and sometimes when both of you have played your roles you drift apart. You're different because of each other, not just in romantic relationships but all types of relationships with other people, hopefully we make each other better.

Who are your favorite heavy metal bands?

I'm actually not super into heavy metal music, but I grew up on Rammstein and got to see them live the last time they were in the U.S. One of my earliest memories is my dad showing me the music video for "Mein Hertz" brennt and being mildly traumatized. Connor and Gray are really into Metalcore and play some heavy stuff in the van sometimes. "Heavy Metal Chess Club" as a name came from a shared google doc my friends and I had in highschool that was just a list of "things that would make cool band names." I saw "Death Metal Chess Club" in there one day and really liked it, but switched it to "Heavy Metal Chess Club" just because I thought the cadence was better, I liked it with the extra syllable there.

Who are your favorite poets? 

I'm really not well read poets wise. I really like Billy Corgan's lyrics from Smashing Pumpkins, they were probably my biggest influence when I started. Right now I've really enjoyed/connected with Sydney Sprague and Oso Oso's lyrics a lot.

Give me a math equation that you think will stump those reading this interview.

This isn't an equation but here's a problem I remember enjoying working on when I was taking Discrete Math. You have a number p, p is prime, p - 2 and p + 2 are both also prime, Prove that p = 5. If you want a hint, try start dividing prime numbers by 6 and see what happens.

Interview conducted via email on May 28, 2026. 

Keep doing your best. That's what counts. 頑張って!

Album Review: Cult Leader - A Patient Man

Pain-stricken hardcore out of Salt Lake City. That's pretty much the whole bag of worms, but I digress... Cult Leader began their ascent up the ranks of the metal underground in 2013 when it became clear that time was up for a regrettably christened prior project (Ask Jeeves or whatever if you don't know already). The band has kept the same lineup since its inception, with Mike Mason on guitar, Casey Hansen on drums, Sam Richards on bass, and Anthony Lucero on vocals. They've released two EPs and now two LPs on Jacob Bannon's Deathwish, Inc. Cult Leader just sounds like suffering personified. They adopt grindcore blastbeats, harrowing powerviolence tempo changes, blackened-doom guitars, and Lucero has a vocal presence that could intimidate the piss out of Dwid Hellion. And that's just when they feel like kicking out the jams. The band also has a penchant for death rock, which they pull off to devastating and peerless effect on their 2019 LP A Patient Man, see "To: Achlys" and, appropriately, "A Patient Man" off that release. Also on that release, you can find "I Am Healed," which bursts with agony and strangulating arpeggios, "Curse of Satisfaction" is the emotional equivalent of surviving a suburban rollover, and "Aurum Reculsa" is literally a sonic blender. If you've ever wanted to know what it feels like for your soul to break out into a cold sweat, set this shit spinning and let it drag you to hell.

Deathwish granted *BRAP! BRAP! BRAP!*

Album Review: My Point of You - This is My First Heist

What can be said of you, from another's point of view? What is another from your standpoint? Overlapping and distinct prognoses that nonetheless form a consecrated whole- you are a shape in the world, a totem of recognition, a symbol, a limitation, and a reflection in the sighted pools of those who sit opposite yourself, and they in turn are that thing which forces a recognition of the self as a self, in the recursive tension between the awareness of the perceived and perceiver, at once in two parts, and yet one and the same. My Point of You exercises the blessing of the penetrative interchange of human consciousness, to create beautiful sounds that intercept your distant orbit, bridging profound barriers of distinction, discernment, and dimensionality, to steal you away from the unstable sequester of alienation, providing a path that extends as a peninsula of positive confirmation that noise is good, and it's good to be nervy enough to know the right kind of noise. Emerging from the static like a seashell revealed in the sands by a receding tide, the harmonious rapture and regeneration that their debut EP, This Is My First Heist, extends into and expands within the marginless terrain of perfect freedom and therefore absolute annihilation, for which their outstretched aura represents a salvatory vein of Mineral wealth which enriches the interior life of the observer, exercising through Lemuria the geists of acidic sequester. The only crime would be not letting them crack the vault of your heart and bathe the inner chamber with the light of sound, beholding yourself in their graceful intrusion, and affirming them in the unfurling communion of the self.

Album Review: Bad Breeding - Blood Manifest

Born in a concrete council block crib, Bad Breeding is anarcho hardcore out of Stevenage, UK. Part Discharge, part Amebix, flush with a rutty blush of Flux of Pink Indians, scrubbed grubby with a hank of Icons of Filth's soiled rags, with an infusion of bloodthirsty metalcore à la Expire, Bad Breeding is an astoundingly harsh punk outfit with a penchant for polemical lyrics against the status quo. Blood Manifest is a 7" sorta EP-type deal that bridges their 4th LP Contempt with whatever horrors they plan to unleash on the world next. The title track "Blood Manifest" wastes no time, revealing its malicious intentions and sordid skills from the drop, drawing a sharpened lace of toothy chords across your throat, leaning the pressure of an undulating, concussive groove into your back, and sticking around just long enough to watch you squirm in the pincers of your predicament, before plunging you mug-first into the scalding thrum and sanity-parcing peal of "Weapon of Tradition." If the A side wasn't jarring enough for you, then you're welcome to pull the ripper on "Exactly as They Wanted You," which dishes out a torrent of crusty skull-carving chords, sure to relieve you of the load of your smugly contorted countenance, just in time to have your dome-goo simmered in a bath of cerebral torment by the crunchy, death-crawl, and psychedelic glass-chewer, "Competition for Existence," an undeniably terse and truly terrifying evaluation of one's individual call to preserve the torturous and meager means by which their right to claim a ration of bread is earned day by miserable day. There is no redemptive arc for the squalor of the psycho-social. 

One, two, buckle my Little Independent Records.

Album Review: Plax - Clean Feeling

An Austin-based, self-described "outsider" punk band, Plax is comprised of seasoned area punks who cut their teeth playing in local mainstays like OBN III, Spray Paint, and Skeleton. Of course, when you're from Austin, self-anointed "outside" status is a given, sorta like saying, "Hey, I'm from Cincinnati, and boy do I like chili, and getting stabbed while walking home from a Reds game!"—it's one of the most "yes, and..." ways of describing your band I've encountered in my xx years on this wet, molding marble of a planet. Their lack of self-awareness is more than made up for by the intensity of their music, though. Plax takes the angular, jumpy chords of Wire and plays them like the resulting feedback will balm some deep irritation in the recesses of their organ tissue, packing a sort of prickly, desolate angst and southern swing into what amounts to a gritty, woodglue-and-flesh-mortared art-punk potash in the vein of self-loathing, blight-rock lodestars Iceage and Drug Church. Victor Ziolkowski's vocals are particularly arresting, favoring the breathy, lurching quality of Keith Morris's vocal delivery, which pushes against the bruising guitar noise as if it's fighting for air. Clean Feeling is their debut, and only record, released on Austin label Super Secret back in 2017, but as you'd expect, Plax sounds anything but bashful and indecisive despite the green behind their gills at the time of its release. Strap up your spurs and get ready to kick over the charcuterie at your next local gallery showcase with the rubbery hooks, leap-frogging chord progressions, and bitter, saliva-slick vocals of "Boring Story," the bashing, weighty chords and combustible, propulsive grooves on "Not for You," and the dirgey, feedback-infused, shambling, black-out shit-stomper "1x1" ringing in your crusty, blood-clotted ear canals. The best art makes a legitimate sonic spectacle out of ruinous intentions, and this is the inflection point where Plax thrives.

Keep it to yourself (Super Secret Records).

Interview: Michael Torres of Beers with Bands

It might shock some of you all to learn this, but I almost never listen to music-related podcasts, and I'm specifically averse to artist interviews. I know, right? Here I am about to plug a podcast where I interview someone, and right out the gate I'm saying, "yeah, I don't listen to this type of 'ish." There is literally only one exception to this, though, and that is Beers with Bands. The reason for this is that Michael Torres has great music tastes and manages to talk to bands I care about. The other reason is that he comes across as a down to earth guy, with no agenda but the love of talking with people who make great music. Points on the board. Man after my own heart. Whenever I look up a DIY band to figure out what their deal is, Michael's already right there, sharing a Hamm's with the dudes on his couch. A suds-soaked shepherd through the sounds of the underground. So, of course, I had to talk to him and see what he's all about! Turns out, Michael is as cool in person as he appears on tape and is twice as fun to share a brew with. We tossed a few back* with some time in February when we talked about his podcast, what albums he has in rotation in his car, and where the best Mexican food in the Twin Cities can be found (hint: it's in a gas station). Check out my interview with Michael of Beers with Bands below:

For more of Michael, check out his YouTube channel.

*I did end up getting drunk during this interview. Hopefully, it's not too distracting for you, my dear, dry and pious listener. 

Album Review: 紅髮少年殺人事件 - Brutal Girl Dillusion

紅髮少年殺人事件* isn't a paint-by-numbers Girl homage, at least not anymore, but there is a faint echo of laudation that resonates with the veritable plucky Fukuoka prefecture progenitors of understated youth-rock refractory, lingering like a ghost in the band's sound. But what untangles 紅髮少年殺人事件 from any of their reasonably attributable influences is the extent that they are not overly persuaded by the examples of their senseis- that they're not shackled to precedence or encumbered by the weight of the past in the least- a bursting blossom with no stem whose petals spark at the lips, vents of an inborn flame. On their most recent release, Brutal Girl Delusion, the Guangzhou-based group seizes on every opportunity to sling-shot around your ears in intersecting, concentric orbits, treating the rhythmic interplay between the members like games of badminton played with live grenades, with the consequential booms of feedback landing like a rain of electrolytes to fuel the generation of their caustic creation. Alternative rock verve and indie-shock spikes of melodic perturbation get pulled and twisted until they're thin enough to fail before being folded over again into themselves, reinforcing their initial promise of tensile strength and fortifying a renewed pledge of potent fury- a moldable but sturdy platform which the band can kick out of shape and scuff back into new and thrilling forms at will. Spry and edgy, heartfelt and anxiously serene, Brutal Girl Delusion is a cry down the well of youth to see if there is any soul left lurking at the bottom who can answer back with any compelling force of reply.

Little critters, big sound (SmallAnimalsRecords).

*I'm not translating their name b/c every translator I use gives me a different response. From what I can gather it's something like "the murder case of a red-haired child," but what really matters is the music, not what they call themselves. 

Interview: Post-Trash + 2025 Recap

You get through your first full week of 2026? Good! Glad the year hasn't killed you yet (not for a lack of trying, I'm sure). Before you finally kiss 2025 goodbye and drop it in the dustbin of history, take a look back with Dan and Pat of Post-Trash and myself as we chat about some of our favorite albums of the past year. 

If you don't already know, Post-Trash is an incredible resource for underground and alternative music coverage with a flexible coverage philosophy and a genuine openness to fresh critical voices. I used to contribute to Post-Trash back when I was just starting my illustrious music writing career (pause for applause/laughter/rain of rotten vegetables), and I'm forever thankful for Dan being willing to give a hopeless weirdo like me a chance to air out his errant opinions. 

Listen to the conversation here:

Albums covered in this episode (in order of appearance): 

Grace Rogers - Mad Dogs

Nyxy Nyx - Cult Classics Vol. I

Hiver & Jason Koth - Offers

Danny Brown - Stardust

Prewn - System

Wombo - Danger in Fives

Militarie Gun - God Save The Gun

Hedonist - Scapulimancy

2025 Year-End Invitational

Ah, another year, another year older, another year closer to kissing dirt. I should be less glib in my introduction for this year's list because this year was not so bad on my ears. Many artists of note, prestige, and accreditation that I've managed to keep a bead on had releases. Melody's Echo loaded a hot one into the Chamber, and Stereolab made themselves heard again with a fresh sonic assay. Billy Woods dropped an album in the same year that he and Elucid ignited a heater with The Alchemist, and then The Alchemist daisy-chained that dish with a second serving of Alfredo along with Freddie Gibbs. La Dispute crashed back into view with No One Was Driving the Car, White Reaper showed they still have something left in the tank with Only Slightly Empty, and Deftones shared some Private Music with the public. Also, Turnstile released Glow On again for some reason. It's all fantastic, and you won't hear a disparaging word from these lips as far as the quality of any of it, but...  why do I still feel underwhelmed? Am I just spoiled for choice? Spiritually sick? I can't say for sure, but I just can't muster the will to commentate on any of it. 

"Saying thing is your job! You have one job! Why you no do job good?!?" I hear you shrieking at me (hypothetically). Firstly, no, my actual job is much less interesting than writing about music (and incidentally pays much better too [emphasis for exaggeration]), and secondly, none of the "big" releases this year are of the kind that I even entertain for coverage here, normally. They're all either on major labels (or on labels that are large enough that they can run in the same pack as the majors on occasion), and they all have large enough audiences that my throwing 2 cents into the coffee can doesn't do much for either of us (emotionally, commercially, artistically, etc...)  

Then there is the fact that they're all huge la discourse artists, aka music makers that you have to have an opinion on (mandatorily sanguine btw unless you're carving a niche brand as a "discerning" contrarian [ie a fussy little bitch]) in order to build a reputation as a take-haver, taste-contriver, and cultural instigator (read: gatekeeper). None of that interests me. I'm not looking to become a marketable personality, one who imposes a canon on people, enforces a listening regimen, or gives people anxiety about what they are or aren't committing brainpower to enjoying (however low voltage). My goal here is to share what I find interesting/invigorating with you as a supplement to your other habits of listening and engagement, as a personal labor of love and expressive outlet, and hopefully in a way that is enough off the beaten path that you escape the dehumanizing torrent of algorithmic optimization- at least for the one minute to an hour or so it takes to read/listen one of my reviews/interviews (hey, a minute of fresh air in the prison yard a day helps reduce stress and illness in inmates according to leading studies on the subject, so you can think of me as providing a similar benefit). 

The other thing about all these big, crucial names in music (really any flagship standard-bearers in the moment) is that even when what they're doing is good, worthy, and platinum standard (which, in my estimation, it mostly is), emotionally, for me, it just lands like more "content." Like, I like what they do, but keeping up with them kind of feels like being on a treadmill long after the buildup of lactic acid in my system has caused my organs to begin humming with a concerning arrhythmia. As in, "Oh, so-and-so has a drop on the way, I should probably know what that's about," instead of IDK, giving my brain a break, or whatever... Continuing as before, it often feels like running an extra mile after I've already completed a 5k. I have to ask myself, am I doing this for my own health, or am I doing it because other people are going to run that extra mile, so I should too...? It's a paradox I've wrestled with for a while without a clear or satisfying resolution. 

Something that Danny Brown (whose LP, Stardust, was an essential release for me this year) said in an interview recently that resonated with me is that there are "too many artists, and not enough fans." This was in response to a general question about why it's harder than ever to find fresh-sounding music, and it's a sentiment I understand deeply. Everyone is trying to sell you something and no one is happy with what they've got. Too many proclaimers, and not enough people to hear their pronouncements. Too many profits, and not enough disciples. Too much butter and not enough popcorn. Especially as someone who considers themselves both an artist (don't laugh) and an avid listener (ok, fine, laugh), I think I have to get better at being the latter and be more comfortable with modest ambitions towards the former. In other words, I need to focus on listening more deeply and thoughtfully, and being more selective about what I hear, while having fewer expectations as to my status as an indie/DIY/punk/emo/blowhard/etc...etc... blogger. After all, appreciation is the point, and if something doesn't call out to me, it's alright to leave it unexamined, resting, at peace where it lies. I've already started to do just that, filtering more of what I hear and not chasing things down if they don't immediately grab my attention. But as far as content here, I'm definitely looking to make a notable pivot in coverage- after I clean out the current backlog of albums angling for my assessment (said list is about 900 albums long btw). 

It might be a minute, but where I'd like to direct my focus in the future is at more international artists, specifically those coming out of Africa and South and Central America. For various reasons, these parts of the world are on the rise and rapidly more self-sustaining, and these trends are going to result in a cultural output in the coming years that I'm excited to see blossom into maturity. I've already received two emails in the last week of this year from publicists promoting amapiano artists, so the shift might be easier than I realized, as the universe may be pulling me in that direction with or without my conscious assent. 

In sum, my goals for 2026, for this blog and my life, are to be more chill towards myself and music, and to be a better listener, appreciating what I have and looking towards a brighter future (even if the brightest stars are not shining nearest to my home). As for 2025, below is a list of 25 albums I thought were rad as hell and/or touched my soul but didn't get around to writing about in the preceding 12 months. Have at them and have a Happy New Year!

Weatherday - Hornet Disaster (Topshelf Records)

2025 really was off to a good start when Hornet Disaster dropped in March. I had no idea it was on its way until Top Shelf emailed me about it, and it's been at the top of my mind since. There are some top-notch emo elegies here (naturally, again, issued on Top Shelf), and some that will affirm and ensure Weatherday's status as a seminally influential underground artist for decades to come, tracks such as "Hug" with its dreary sense of yearning and crawling, as well as the anguish-sickened passages, biting blizzard-y feedback swells of "Blood Online" and the wired-warp and seething surge of alienated implosion that is "Nostalgia Drive Avatar." Funnily, even though its predecessor Come In was only released in 2019, Hornet Disaster has the feeling of a revival album for the artist, which is understandable, as the impact that Weatherday has had on the modern underground music scene at an international level is almost incalculable, and frankly, that meant that they had a lot to prove with this release. It's not as overtly reclusive or peculiarly scratchy and experimental as what we've come to know Weatherday for, but it's just as daringly sentimental and compelling in its wounded gait, maintaining its shadowy eminence without sacrificing its emotional core. Despite everything, Weatherday is still themself. Forever.

 

MJ Noble - Songs From My Castle Tower (Doom Trip)

The immediate and insistent impression that I was seeded with upon beholding the cover of MJ Nobel's third album, Songs From My Castle Tower, was that it was the vessel of a cybernetic current and celestially radiant flow of ethereal inspiration, cascading over and between the battlements of an Avalonian spire, pouring down on the teeming mass of mortals below like cool, molten starlight... Now, it may be somewhat anticlimactic to acknowledge, but these initial impressions, gleaned from appearances alone, were impeccably precise. An elfin excursion into a vespertine grove of dark illumination is exactly what this album is- emancipation in a fantastical world of blissfully incarnate passion, rendered in arresting fidelity at the nexus of wondering daydreams and fiber-optic fanned eudaimonia. Folk music for a digital dynast with root privileges to your heart.

Citric Dummies - Split With Turnstile (Feel It Records)

My esteem for Feel It Records grows by the day. Sam's work with the label became a gold standard in my personal punk headcanon after splunking into Why Bother?'s catalog; now it's going platinum with this Citric Dummies LP, Split With Turnstile (which, ironically, is more vital than the album that the actual Turnstile released this year). A bio that I read of them alludes to their sound jumbling and interlocking odds and stray crumbs from Barely Legal era Hives, the Dwarves, and the buzz-bomb of contemporaries Dark Thoughts, and while that's all enough to stake your life on when it comes to this record, in essence, it's a vindication of that classic early hardcore style as a means of liberating your crown clean off your dome- fast, irreverent, catchy, and uncontainably hostile- they're like a dog that bites your leg and, via a metastatic psychic mutation, is able to inject a scathing and scandalous rejection of the human condition in its current-year craven state, directly into the mainline of your arteries like snake venom. This record is the good kind of sick!

Shallowater - God's Gonna Give You A Million Dollars (Self-Released)

With one of the most Coen brothers-esque titles I may have bonafided with these tired eyes, Houston "dust-gaze" bowlers Shallowater grant a sip of succor to the people lost in the godless desert of 2025 with their second LP God's Gonna Give You a Million Dollars. Much has been made of the "country" side of this record, and while it does have quite a bit of twang tucked in around the trim, it's really only "country" in the way that an old windmill left in a fallow wheatfield to oxidize into an indigestible cereal of sharp, coarse particulates could be considered "country," or an old barn cat caught in a snare laid for a fox outside the henhouse- a dark reflection and a fateful and justly cruel metaphor for the silent, progressive decay and barrenness of spirit and soil that has exhausted the heartland. That kind of "country."

life - we won't say a word until tomorrow (Self-Released)

It's been a banner year for Damián Ojeda. Ok, every year is a big year for Damián, but between his various black metal, shoegaze, emo, and skramz marquees, he's dropped something like 40 separate albums- the majority of which I have not heard because I have a job and a wife—but more than life simply getting in the way of bingeing on his output, I'm frequently stricken with an awe-induced paralysis by his work, wherein I feel compelled to spend long stretches of time simply wallowing in and soaking up the vibe and nuances of each release, incapable of moving on until I've wrung all the serotonin I can out of it. Case in point: I haven't been able to step past his summer release, we won't say a word until tomorrow, under the life honorific, to get a taste of the other three or four other life titles he's dropped since. It's just a beautifully painful listen. Conscious and cathartic, patient and devoted, bleak and blissful. Most bands are lucky to come within spitting distance of something this compelling in their entire career, and yet, this probably just felt like another Friday to Damián when he unveiled it to the world. Now, this is a fantastic record; I've already said as much, and the semi-final track "allusion to summer distance" was literally my song of the summer, but what really wins it a bushel of roses from me is the locket-shaped snippet on the cover of this album which encloses Nana Osaki and Nana Komatsu in an eternal embrace and whirl of intractable kismet. Ai Yazawa is a genius, an inimitable talent, and her manga about tragically fated love and diehard friendship vibes so hard with this album that it almost feels like they were made with each other in mind. It's all the heartbreak you can handle- sealed with a kiss.

Menace4Hire - With All That I Know Now (Self-Released)

On With All That I Know Now, Chicago MC Menace4Hire invokes a nostalgic and contemplative frame of mind, weaving observations and hard-wrung conclusions together like a colorful ribbon that connects the sun-faded images of a life in reflection as they lie static in a heavy photo album. Dust-tripping skips and loops rotate under Menace's studious reels of commentary, and lissome yet graceful flow like the treadmill of his mind, propelling him forward and sparing him from stagnant complacency, as the wheels turn and epiphanies emerge like daylight pouring over the horizon. There will be plenty more for Menace to come to know, as he is still young and the world has yet to put its full weight on his shoulders, but he's already got sure footing, clear eyes, and wisdom to bank, and that counts for a lot.

Flora Hibberd - Swirl (22Twenty)

Lucky you that you get to share a planet with Flora Hibberd. And what good fortune that she has an album out this year, called Swirl. And while we're counting our blessings, there is a song on that album titled "Lucky You," a peppy and sardonic twist on Americana and a tender take on garage-pop that sizzles with impulsive fluorescence- kind of like the record on the whole. Swirl was recorded by the London-born, Paris-palisaded guitarist/singer/songwriter in the Northwestern city of Eau Claire, which since at least For Emma, Forever Ago has garnered a reputation for sublating the traditions and trappings of standard American playing styles- in other words, Flora Hibberd, who on this LP exhibits intersecting qualities of Haley Fohr and Cat Power, happens to find herself at ease and in good company in her circuitous yet delicate evasion and amendment of orthodoxy

Superdestroyer / Leave (Nelson) B - NCTV Vol. 2: Negative thoughts about myself and people I love dearly (Lonely Ghost Records)

Superdestroyer and LNB are moots irl. That's pretty much it. That's why this album happened. You can learn more about its precursor in this interview I did with the guys last year. Ok, bye! *shoving noises, muffled commotion* Alright, fine! So my editor (ie my conscience) is telling me that I need to say more about this record, because it's made by good people, who happen to be two of my favorite emo/DIY personalities, and it's a very fun and edifying listen... which is exactly why it's hard to come up with things to say about it... Like, have you ever looked at that panel of Dr.Manhattan sitting ponderously on the surface of Mars, gazing longingly starward, and thought to yourself, "yeah, same." Alright, now imagine there are two Dr. Ms, and they both just lost someone irreplaceable to them. That's the vibe of this LP, only less forlorn and crowned with a finish of stardust and cosmic dynamism.

they are gutting a body of water - LOTTO (ATO Records)

They Are Gutting a Body of Water... what, do they live near a data center or something? You think I'm just being funny, but there is something somewhat prophetic about this Philly group (who everyone insists are shoegaze, though to my ears they're doing a grunged-up version of Sunny Day Real Estate, but WHAT DO I KNOW? I'm only an expert when it comes to these sorts of things) and their album LOTTO, a distorted, weathered tome and sonic manuscript, depicting a world drained of vitality and its sense-making structures, where people filter in and out like flames in the dark, choked to a snuff by a high wind. Apparitions glide around the periphery of a séance circle, a distant zone blighted by a spiritual fugue of amnesia. It's bleak enough of a setting that it could almost be mistaken for our own broken system of sinking pirate-ocracy. Don't you feel fortunate to have lived long enough to witness a fanatical state of parasitism, once only imaginable in fiction, become grounded reality? Maybe fortunate isn't the right word. But only the depths of irony can do justice to the inheritance of such a wretched windfall.

Cola Boyy - Quit to Play Chess (Record Makers)

Look at this photo of Matthew Urango, aka Cola Boyy. Look at this little pimp! Bro looks like he's got the world at the end of a yo-yo string- give it a flick and let it ride like a platinum disco record at a late-night house party. Quit to Play Chess is the gold-hearted, neo-disco-funk auteur's final record, unfortunately, as he passed away earlier this year, but it contains his best realized efforts to date. "Abundant" is a term I would use liberally to describe the passionate and distinctive confluences of crunchy Caribbean rhythms, surfy chop chords, drum and bass rattle, equitable yacht rock, and big hairy disco grooves that generously extend over the whole of this album and breathe a technicolor authenticity into its plentiful vision of the world's potential. You'd have to have a piece missing from your heart not to vibe with the pure mood manifest on this record. RIP Matthew. Thank you for this solid gold send-off.

Lealani - Beep Bop Boop (Self-Released)

It's a tale as old as... well, AOL chat rooms. Girl goes online. Girl falls in love... with a machine. What, you think she was going to get a boyfriend? Well, sure, ok, but what can a man do for you that an optimized hard drive and fiber optics connection can't? Ok... I'm hearing something about... jars? Jar opening can be automated. What can't be automated is girls (well, a girl in this case) leveraging their love of technology to approximate sonic encounters with extraterrestrial travelers party-crashing from digital destinations unknown. Beep Bop Boop is Lealani's second solo LP, a neon-aura glam bath of leisurely gratifying and marginally disquieting, petite pop-epigrams and escapist codas that function like little trap doors in the floor of a stuffed animal factory, which drop into recesses of dayglo laughter and pots of harmonizing amphibians. AI could never match what Beep Bop Boop is rolling out, and if it tried, Lealani would likely glitch-prompt it into oblivion with the chaos seed of her psyche.

Faetooth - Labyrinthine (The Flenser)

Personally, I'm psyched that bands are starting to describe their music as distinct and definite genres of their own making more and more often. It shows a real clarity of vision and a desire to control one's own narrative. Take Faetooth: they're calling their style "Fairy Doom." There are a number of ways that you could interpret said designation, but it gets the point of their sound- a combination of the earthen whimsy of Chelsea Wolfe, the witchy desperation of Ragana, the avant-chaos of Thou, and the ambient fury of Show Me the Body- across to you like a flaming bolt to the breastplate. The cold majesty of their latest LP, Labyrinthine, feels best appreciated in the absolute, most dismal spans of winter, the periods during which it genuinely seems sane to ponder whether a thaw will ever grace the land again. We haven't hit that point quite yet in the Midwest as of this writing, but when we do, I'll be thankful to have the frigid solace of this album to keep me company.

Johnny Football Hero - Contingency Plan (Lonely Ghost Records)

Johnny Football Hero sounds completely pissed off on their LP, Contingency Plan. Their outrage and the outpour of grievance is at such an extraordinary, heated degree of fervency that it's transformed them into an entirely different band. The thing that makes them somewhat recognizable on this release, when compared to their '21 EP, Complacency, is the subject matter of their songs, which remains a reflection of the near-ubiquitous batter-thick spread of suffering that blankets the swelter of our modern hell world. It's all post-hardcore, incoming like a cloud of Nerf-footballs strapped with c4- whistling, blazing, and hot with intent, striking with precision and spreading the fever of their indignant fervor like a plague of premeditated epiphany and motivated malcontent. Emergencies call for action, and action is what Johnny Football Hero aims to inspire.  

84 Tigers - Nothing Ends (Spartan Records)

I'm presuming that the Reed brothers zeroed in on the name for their band because '85 Bears would have been too traitorous and '83 Lions would have been too obvious for the proud Motor City denizens, and for a project birthed to examine themes of nostalgia, loss, and maturation, you don't want a nom de plume that distracts too much from the subject matter, or the music for that matter. 84 Tigers’s second LP, the affirmatively titled Nothing Ends, offers a tightfisted, sober strain of melocore that raises the gut-plunging introspection of Chuck Ragan's repertoire, with a deservedly grungy afterburn to its headstrong chord crunch, and possesses a bitter acidity in the absorbing plateaus of its marrow that stings in nettling distinction with the pragmatic yet replenishing assurances of its lyrical content. A tyrant and a confidant, folded into one.

Samba Touré - Baarakelaw (Glitterbeat Records)

Literally the last time I wrote about a blues artist was when I interviewed Deludium Skies back in February. So, for this next pick I'm going to be discussing a tribute to the Rolling Stones' Sticky Finge—NAHHHHHH, psych! Screw that Boomer-slop impostor Americana- listen to Samba Touré's Baarakelaw. It's better for you, it's more soulful, it's got more heart, it's real; it's about the sweat and scratch required to dust up the dough to make a loaf of bread, and the blood and clay that build the foundations of communities. Transcendent, rhythmic guitars woven in poetic patterns, pulling threads and mosaic imprints into a tapestry of contemporary life in conversation with the traditions upon which it is founded. It's not technically the blues, but it's how you can best translate what Samba is up to if you're not Malian.

Liaam - Dancing With My Clothes On (Self-Released)

There is something about Liaam that makes me think he'd thrive in a standard-cable package slot where he's allowed to make surrealist skits with sock puppets... but maybe that's entirely because he reminds me of another twiggy, wiggly man with a similar-sounding name. It has nothing to do with his music, which sounds like he's afflicted with an itchy case of Half Japanese, with a far more terminal secondary diagnosis of Swell Maps... I'm afraid it's inoperable, ma'am. The best thing we can do for him is let him dance with his favorite collegiate blazer and tapered slacks until the friction starts to spark and he goes out in a puff of pyrrhic glory. I think it's what he would want, ma'am... that and his own TV show...

Sallow Moth - Mossbane Lantern (Lilang Isla)

The Sallow Moth saga continues with Mossbane Lantern, named for a vegetated artifact of either profoundly magical or obscure technical origins that rests discreetly hidden in an icy inlet and grants its possessor the ability to teleport long distances, or even interdimensionally... It would probably be helpful if I mentioned that Sallow Moth is a conceptual sci-fi sound project by super-industrious metal master Garry Brents, in which he explores a universe set into chaos by mutant celestial moths who have degenerated from their positions as cosmic gardeners and naturalist stewards into a force that threatens the fabric of reality itself. Mossbane Lantern is Garry's only LP with this project in 2025 (the other releases under the Sallow Moth banner being a demo and a pair of EPs) and is technically a continuation of the Vial EP from 2024. This all might sound crazy, but it really pales in comparison to the actual music on this beast, which sounds like Cynic performing some manner of manic, fungus-flavored jungle-jazz to appease a disturbed Quetzalcoatl-like apparition. It's the farthest thing you can imagine from normal and restrained, and that's why it rules!

Bones Shredder - Morbid Little Thing (Sunken Teeth)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! What the actual fuck?!? This record makes me feel like it’s 2002 again! Dark, bruisingly catchy and beguilingly haunting pop-punk is not something I ever thought I'd hear with fresh ears posterior to the Bush-era implosion of everything charmingly irreverent about punk in the daunting umbra of perpetual imperialism and economic disarray. I guess things just had to get bad enough for people to stop worrying and embrace the terminal glissade enough to welcome morbid make-out anthems like the sanguinely pining "Let Me In" and tuneful tug of "Pulling Teeth" into the crypt of their heart chamber. It helps that there is as much Pinkerton as From Here to Infirmary in this venomous brew, helping to balance out the persistent allusions to tragedy with an obliging antivenin of hope.

YHWH Nailgun - 45 Pounds (AD 93)

The last time I encountered NYC quartet YHWH Nailgun was when I stumbled across their 2022 EP while killing time in an Airbnb in Louisville. I have such a vivid memory of that place, as well as the way YHWH's ricochet and recoil contrasted with its pseudo-Victorian decor, dark-shrouded interior, and sturdy but ancient furniture, shattering the idle calm of that place as if it were a radiation-laden satellite tumbling back in time to Deep Impact the house Wuthering Heights was based on. Their LP 45 Pounds eternalizes the freak energy that captivated me initially, while continuing to be just as incongruously alien within the modern setting of my home as they appeared to me while I was hibernating between the folds of an Emily Brontë novel. On this album, YHWH articulates something sonically akin to a lobotomized David Byrne, whose frontal lobe has been partially replaced with an outdated TV antenna that only picks up scrambled broadcasts of West African variety shows and rejected episodes of Later... with Jools Holland from an alternative dimension where Xiu Xiu had pivoted to become a particularly bizarre and brazen, hemp and barbed-wire necklace-hawking jam band. It's called 45 Pounds, but to me it's as dense and massive as a black hole caving in God's forehead.

Summer 2000 - Blue Meringue (Self-Released)

What is a Blue Meringue? According to Summer 2000, it's something along the lines of a wake pool filled with tar- an undulating state of paralysis where you're somehow always propelled forward while simultaneously sinking deeper into place- like trying to use a bungee cord to escape a whirlpool, or a Toyota pinned in place by a block of cement gouging into its undercarriage while it spins its wheels. It's a good metaphor for the necessity of growing through one's experiences while still feeling inadequate with the results. In the end, you can't really ever escape yourself due to the inertia of your flaws; you can only ever learn to live with and accept yourself and make the best of the consequences, even if you're perpetually aggrieved by how far you have fallen short of expectations. You're only human after all, and even when you've run over the median barrier and bent up your axle, as long as you're alive, you can always call a tow and get back on the road... eventually. Your insurance agent and/or SO might not be too happy with you, but as long as you're trying your best, you run a good chance of being forgiven for your roadside mishaps... probably. That's what I'm getting from Summer 2K's Blue Meringue, at least. A simple reminder of your inescapable humanness from a deeply thoughtful album.

Bug Moment - The Lazer Collection (Self-Released)

The first (and actually only) time I've seen Milwaukee's Bug Moment was when I caught them opening at a show at the Cactus Club where Blind Equation, Hey, ily, and Heccra were also playing... It was one of the most stacked lineups I can recall seeing outside of Chicago this year, and it's still one of my 2025 highlights. Being in that kind of company should give you a good idea of what to expect on their EP, The Lazer Collection, but then again, they're their own breed of shimmering, polychromatic anomaly, separate from their peers. Bug Moment certainly favors twinkly guitar antics, extreme metal vocals, and micromusic-esque infusions of electronics, but they also have this huge, whirlwind quality to their music, as well as perfectly calibrated pop-punk and alternative songwriting instincts that make comparisons to Paramore and Flyleaf unforced and positively apt. I like this album a lot. You could even say I've got the Bug Moment bug! ...at least for the time being.

La Rat - La Rat (South of North)

Sometimes to find the good stuff you have to dig deep... or look in the gutter. That's where I presume La Rat spends most of their time (although I found them via my Bandcamp feed, which, seeing as it mainly consists of solo noise and ambient projects at the moment, could be considered part of the internet's sanitation drainage system and digital superfund site, and might require government intervention to regulate accordingly). The Amsterdam-based duo's self-titled LP is a strange and vibey hip-hop volume detailing accounts of urban scavengery, that pack-rats together sooty soul samples and rough-cut R'n'B grooves into clumpy tangles of dirty delights, which vocalist Goya van der Heijden burrows into and gnaws to pulp with the scissors-like incisors of her squeaky but breathy, hushed but boldly furtive flow. This one is all cheddar, hold the cheese.

El Michels Affair - 24 Hr Sports (Big Crown Records)

I don't have to shout it out every time Leon Michels releases an album, but then again, it feels like I do, as I find them so compelling. To me, Leon is re-engineering the soul album one effort at a time, understanding the influence that soul had on hip-hop, and then working backward from hip-hop back to soul while conserving the marrow of each: the cool swelter and richness of sentiment from soul, and the scrappy, pioneering drive of hip-hop, and forging something unique and unpredictable in their fusion. For his 24 Hr Sports LP, Leon drops the Ghanaian hand-painted movie poster shtick in favor of '80s-uncle's-parlor nostalgia, with a soft-focus photo of a giant trophy adorning the cover. He certainly earned the reward pictured here for past efforts as much as for present ones. We should really give the man a medal every year in an Olympic-style ceremony. Maybe if we start saving our change in a coffee can, we'll have enough to put on that kind of production in time for his next LP in '27-'28 or so.

Mildred - Pt. 1 (Dead Mothers Collective)

Does the apocalypse need a prequel? I guess every disaster has its stages. LA's Milred jumped right to the conclusion of their conceptual drama in a hymn to a tragedy of errors and eras with Pt. 2, and now follows up with this year's Pt. 1, a significantly more involved piece of work spanning more than two hours in run time and incorporating the talents of more than 23 musicians. Still, even at the length of a Golden-Age Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic, this noisy eruption of Birthday Party-esque provocation and Kakotheos-oriented post-hardcore will likely feel shorter and less dyspepsia-inducing than your average Sunday sermon- especially if you have the misfortune of being dragged to one of those houses of "worship" that have incorporated bespoke addresses from a Kirkified-AI prompt into their liturgy- an accepted state of affairs in this country, despite it being outwardly more blasphemous (and unintentionally surreal) than the band Liturgy's entire catalog- not for lack of trying, of course.

Dikembe - King (Skeletal Lightning)

If there was any doubt that I'd save the best for last, fear not, for "best" is a subjective concept, but actually, the King EP from Dikembe is an unexpected delight this year. Not because Dikembe isn't in the habit of delivering catchy, heartfelt, and momentously urgent melodic hardcore, but because it's so effortlessly straightforward and on-point. They really do make it look easy, and that's really what you need after a long year: something that can throw the emergency brake on during the spin-out and give you about 20 minutes or so of breathing room. If that doesn't earn them the right to unilaterally appoint themselves "king" for the moment, then they should stop handing out crowns because they're passing them out to all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. Long live the squatchy sonic sovereign!

That's it! You made it to the end. Congratulations! Now get out and seize the night! Good luck out there bud. Onward to 2026!

Pictured: Me trying to enjoy my evening.