Fast, dirty songs give you that little kick in the ass you need
Maybe try some fast living vicariously with Spøgelse and these speedy elbow-throwing songs. The Swedish hardcore punk band advertise a lifestyle of motion, momentum, and attitude.
Of course the first song is titled “Who Cares,” but it shortly introduces the band and singer’s confident, chin-out sound—“No, I don’t want that attitude, I don’t want to love you, No, I don’t need that shit from you, I guess I don’t.” It’s a good fuck-you of a song with fuzz-busted guitars and mind-made-up tempo. “Terrible Head” offers more of the same, but Spøgelse at least sound like they’re having fun.
The production throughout leaves instruments muffled and buried, for better or worse. And the drums, which run a little ahead of the rest of the band, sound buried under the distortion and noise.
Most of these songs are barely a minute long, but “Kick Them Where It Hurts” manages almost two and a half minutes of okay stuff, starting with a chunky little riff that beckons the rest to come jam. The song even makes space for some hot licks. The playing on this song outshines the vocal. Everywhere else, that voice is the album’s strength.
If you’re looking for a RIYL, it’s probably Motorhead. Listen to “East Coast Nightmare” and try not to hear that influence.
Spøgelse debuted with a self-titled album in spring 2023. This follow-up, “Spøgelse II,” came out via Welfare Sounds & Records on October 24, 2025.
Aerosmith peaked commercially from the late 1980s through the 90s. "Get a Grip," released March 1993, is the band's best-selling album. Joe Perry’s thresher of a guitar and Steven Tyler's highly animated vocals mix with huge pop hits like "Cryin'" and "Crazy." It was Aerosmith's eleventh studio album.
My favorite Aerosmith record, the 1973 self-titled debut, sounds nothing like it.
The music's punch comes not from showmanship—Tyler's yawps and Perry's lavish guitar—but from the sound of good bluesmen vibing.
Compared to other early 70s hard rock bands, the album's dusty production—especially the low gain on Joe Perry's guitar—softens the blow a bit. In his memoir, Perry says, "… because I lacked the studio chops to prescribe a remedy, I kept quiet. It pained me, though, that my guitar was not cutting through."
But compared to Aerosmith's later work, the album sounds raw, and I like it.
Maybe what I like most is Tyler's straight-ahead vocals. They shine more for his timing than his affectations.
I grew up with classic rock radio and heard Aerosmith's hits and how the band's sound changed over the decades. You have the raw, early classics like "Dream On," "Sweet Emotion," and "Walk This Way." Then comes bigger production on hits like "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)," "Angel," "Rag Doll," "Love in an Elevator," and "Janie's Got a Gun." And, finally, the full-on pop hits like "Amazing," "Livin' on the Edge," "Cryin'," and "Crazy."
I always liked the early songs best, so to get past the hits, I went back and listened to Aerosmith's first four albums. The debut is easily my favorite.
Here's "Make It," the first song on the first album.
French hardcore band Cleaver wreaks havoc on debut
The chaotic and crude-sounding "No More Must
Crawl" debuts the hard-shove hardcore of Cleaver. Songs grind and scrape
by in an Adderall-fueled turn, switching impatiently between sludge, choppy
heavy metal, dissonant sidesteps, and chord-rolling hardcore.
The sound is a spasming relapse of American hardcore
from the late 90s, like Botch and maybe early Converge at a time when Converge's epic album "Jane
Doe" floated still on the hazy horizon.
The title track of "No
More Must Crawl" echoes the eponymous closer of "Jane Doe." I
liked “The Plight,” which opens with loud, dissonant detonations amid chunky
power chords before slowing to a bleary slog. And the album’s eruptions of
grindcore, like on “Thudding Stares” and “Kyg,” add vitality to these hastily
stitched-together episodes of frustrated sonic violence.
Cleaver formed in France in 2018 and consists of
Franck Fortina (bass and vocals) and brothers Mathis Garelli (guitar and
vocals) and Léo-Paul Garelli (drums). The music shows a lot of promise amid
the debut’s rough edges.
Wild Beyond bargains with a lying, writhing serpent of thrashy black metal. The band pursues chaos and finds itself in a lovely mess on its self-titled debut.
The opener, “In the Footsteps of Mars,” is exemplary: the guitar crashes ahead and the cymbal stands teeter as the bass shakes the burning ground under your feet. Everything in a frenzy, everything in constant motion.
The Goddamn thing is reckless.
“Detonation of Secret Works” shows the same disregard for safety. I found its manic, climbing riffs inventive and colorful. The vocal crawls between growls, snarls, and wretches, leaning more toward black metal than death.
Songs do relent, but only between all the dungeon-defiling cutting and squealing.
And the band will explore. “Frenzied at the Skull” almost recalls classic British metal. On "Antichrist Coronation," the maniacal drumming momentarily loses touch with the guitars, losing each other in the dark they create.
The album remains dynamic through its eight songs. Some moments lack inspiration, and some songs perhaps go too long. But what beeswax can long withstand the heat of the sun?
This Philadelphia trio took shape amid peak 2020 covid. "Wild Beyond" was released April 14, 2023, on Gates of Hell Records.
Over Opiated in a Forest of Whispering Speakers, the new album from Seven Nines and Tens, introduces
vocals to the Vancouver band’s blend of progressive post-hardcore and shoegaze.
The vocals debut on album opener “Popular Delusions” and sound like a softer
version of an Alice in Chains-style harmony over thick, cotton-sonic waves of
thunder.
“Throwing Rocks at Mediocrity” again rolls out a
controlled, tapered vocal harmony, but this time over picked-out single notes
that sheen over a stuttering beat. Then a dramatic guitar and bass figure
diverts the song into a confident strut that sets your head nodding yes. The
song slows, expands, explores until it finds enough room to explode in slow
motion.
I wondered if the vocals were too consistently
restrained. But, with a little time, “Throwing Rocks at Mediocrity” turns its
attention outward, then upward, reaching cruising altitude after 3:35. The drum
work rounding out the song’s finale not only sounds great, it feels great.
The album’s promotional copy notes that, when writing
the record, Seven Nines and Tens performed live with bands like Alcest and
Pinkish Black. I can hear those bands’ influences, and I hear the influences of
bands including Tool, Alice in Chains, and Black Sabbath.
The fourth song, “Let's Enjoy the Aimless Days While
We Can,” starts softly, “You’re everywhere and nothing. Don’t tell me we can’t
pull this off. It’s a far cry from a factory life. Permanence of the
firmament.” These fever-dream lyrics lead to a churning riff overdriven with
fuzz, a tentative, plodding bass and drum fall in behind, and the song labors,
barely able to lift its lids. Heavy reverb blurs the edges of the vocal, which
struggles under the subsea tones of the guitars. The song is a sailing stone.
But “Edutainment” offers a dramatic lift. The rhythm
section engages with a syncopated beat and challenging bass line—together, they
complement the even, chanting vocal harmony. The verse returns with guitars
added to the arrangement. Then the song transforms, and by Jove, at 3:15, the
album hits a second high, lifted by the surrender in the lyrics and vocal,
“It’s going to end just like it started.”
Over Opiated in a Forest of Whispering Speakers was released January 7 and is the third album from
Seven Nines and Tens. For this release, the band signed to metal label
Willowtip Records.
Beach House is releasing an album, Once Twice Melody, in "chapters." The four songs comprising the first chapter were released in November. One song was "Superstar."
"Superstar" offers sentimentality. Sentimental songs always have a chance with me. I like sentimentality. I like to remember good times from when I was younger because otherwise I just worry about everything that is happening now or might happen in the future. I like to think about the good times in past relationships.
When you were mine We fell across the sky
Then the song (and I with it) turns maudlin for a moment.
Here is an album that
did not get enough attention last year—The
Jungle, by Plants and Animals. It was released in October 2020 and is Plants and
Animals’ fifth studio album and first in four years. The Montreal indie-rock
band broke through with its 2008 album, Parc Avenue, which
featured the glorious kiss off, “Bye, Bye, Bye.” But coverage of subsequent
albums dwindled. High-profile music site Pitchfork had reviewed every Plants and Animals album since
2008, but not this one. I do not know why: the band self-produces wonderful,
beautiful-sounding records, and The Jungle is no exception.
The
title track features a restless bass and head-nodding beat. Plants and Animals
has always captured this kind of nervous cool. The last 90
seconds jams out. The song sounds casual, but that belies its precision. The good ones can make it sound easy. Then comes “Love That Boy” with
its acoustic layers, electric guitar shimmering out alien, submerged little notes,
and trippy, translucent lyrics: “Is the moon following us? Is it moving at
exactly the same speed? All experience connected, holding on its fingertips.”
The floaty sounds complement the tight drumming and loudly churning bass.
What
follows are the album’s best parts. “House on Fire” is fucking great. The
hi-hat riding atop a throbbing, plucky bass; the synthesizer that comes in at
51 seconds like the air horn on a semi-trailer truck; the programmed
synthesizer that darts through scales; and then the verse—delivered with
ebullient focus and clarity: “Your house is burning—your home is on fire!”
Plants
and Animals capitalize on that intensity with “Sacrifice.” This song includes
sudden rhythm changes. Insistent tom drums and gained-up guitar hack away through
several chippy bars in the verse, then chords splish as the singer implores,
“Hold on to yourself / Don't you want to die?” Then the song abruptly
downshifts into a dependency-shedding chorus: “I gave you the best years of my
life, volunteered on your behalf / sacrifice—it doesn't matter—for dopamine and
lots of laughs.”
A
cassette tape that sounds like it was left in the car all summer plays a
recording of an acoustic guitar picking out a chord. Jangly, slightly warped.
That is “Get My Mind.” At 21 seconds, the hi-hat opens up, the drummer raps on
the snare, and the music tumbles into a song. A guitar slices off a thick,
fuzzy riff of single, heavy notes, and the arrangement builds into a spiritual
experience.
And
it is here that The Jungle pulls back. “Le Queens” steams. A
woman sings, “Sous les lumières dans le Queens / Tu t'embrasse avec moi / Ton
visage blanche sous les fars / Pour la premiere fois”; then a switch to
English: “Baby, don't you laugh ‘cause hearts get broke like that.” On “In Your
Eyes,” a heavy phaser with subtle wah-wah effect produces underwater tones. And
then the finale: “Bold” walks in quietly. But at the chorus, it cries out for
your attention: “Waiting for you to be more bold / The drama rising, running
out of time / Okay, what's next?” I first heard The Jungle two months ago. I
have listened to it over and over, and I know what is next. I will return to The
Jungle as time runs out.
Guitars lumber,
vocals bellow, drums exorcise still spirits: this is Incidents,
the debut from Black Ink Stain.
The
French noise-rock trio sounds like Unsane, and this
album is like a used cargo van overloaded with deep-groove riffs bowling down
the freeway.
“I
See You Dead” opens with a continuous track of bass and drums along with a dissonant
guitar. Then the song rounds into a steel-chain groove accompanied by a flat,
shouted vocal. A vacant, moody section comes at about two minutes in, and,
after that, everything condenses again loudly into the groove.
“Pont
Des Goules” is the most dynamic song on Incidents. It starts with a soft-focus
riff, fuzzy notes soon accompanied by another steel-toe beat. Then comes a
clean vocal—a rarity for Black Ink Stain. The songflows
between partslike lava and
recalls the soft-loud-soft-loud style so prevalent in the 1990s. On “Frozen Stance,” a bass riff rumbles and jabs
through the opening minute. Restless drums and a dissonant guitar join, and
this leads into a loafing, bottoming-out chorus.
Most
songs fit this pattern: trunky grooves power ahead, find pockets of noise, then
get back in gear. Black Ink Stain also takes advantage of the loads of momentum
it builds in songs to add in breakdowns or syncopated high-knee jogs and not
lose the groove. I guess once you build up that inertia, the easiest thing
to do is keep going.
Jars moves you with a mix of dangerous grooves and hardcore punk on its latest album, ДЖРС III.
The first song, “Заебало” (“Sick”), hammers out snaking riffs with a
mallet. The guitars cut a dissonant, high-end whine, and the anxiety is
eased only by the yelling vocals (“Oh!”) and driving drums and bass
guitar. The tension grows over the song—and over and again on these nine
tracks of ear-filling discontent.
Jars is a Moscow-based noise rock trio. It has existed in some form
or another since 2011. The band has a handful of albums and EPs, and in
December 2020, released ДЖРС III (a Russian translation of the band's name plus III).
Find the dialed-in inebriation of “Черное прикосновение” (“Curse
Curse Curse!”), the five-minute musical equivalent of bashing in car
windows in a convenience store parking lot. The song features a
bass-driven groove below guitar notes that crunch and jangle while the
vocal yells behind the din.
Jars want you to recall the 1990s and record label Amphetamine
Reptile. I hear Shellac and Drive Like Jehu. And on “Спидкоп”
(“Speedcop”), I hear even a little Converge. This compact, powerhouse of
a song opens with a moment of feedback, then explodes into hardcore.
Everything sounds good: the screaming vocal, the way the guitar strings
ring out rather than shoosh a wall of distortion, and the penetrating
bass and crisp drums. Nicely done.
The album ends with “Москва слезам не верит” (“Moscow does not
believe in tears”), a half-marathon in a pocket groove. Nasty guitar
streaks color and vocals shout out—but all succumb to the flexing rhythm
of the bass and drums. The song retools after five minutes, escalates,
slows—the sound of a band sharing consciousness—and drives on, passing
10 minutes, with gobs of mud thrown off with each turn of the wheel. The
album’s song lengths vary, but the volume stays the same.
