about friends sending links to shitty music

Good aggressive music has some passion. The drummers are supposed to have a swing, barely perceptible variations of volume and pace. They aren't metronomes. Varying guitar strums, an improvised accent here or there, a quick adjustment as the music moves the musicians. The music has to move the people, not the other way around. Parents worry about their children, some bleach in children’s hair, some court dates replacing violin lessons.

a review of an album I liked—“Fear of the Plow" by noise rock band Haraball

Haraball make the raw, resentful sound of years squandered

Haraball deliver ugly defiance from the pulpit, and its hostage flock, having listened to the band’s unwelcome homily, so exhorted, have neither the time nor energy to hope for the best, for they expend their reserves steeling themselves for the worst.

Six years have passed since last we heard from Haraball, but this Norwegian noise rock band just released “Fear of the Plow.” The sound wears the spit of punk and hardcore and exudes a lack of reverence and dismal determination forged by life’s hard training.

Song structures are simple, but the music brims with texture and tension. For example, “The Squatter” stews in frustration. Having bottled it up too long, the lid bounces over the hiss.

And I like “Prison Cheese,” with its customary reverb and echo on vocals that pronounce and admonish, the bowling drums, the bass like a rolling slicer, and guitars full of subtle noise.

“Fear of the Plow” follows 2019’s “Hypno” and was released September 19, 2025, on the label Fysisk Format.