This has been one of my favorite release weeks this year. The Ghost is Clear Records pitted MOON PUSSY against Doom Beach as Coolest Album of the Week finalists. But that wasn’t all, joining them was Obey Cobra, Usurp Synapse and Darius. Nearly any other week, most of these would win running away with it. But this week wasn’t any other week.
This week was the noise rock, post-punk death pit.
I mean, there are non-finalists here that would have won some other weeks. That’s what kind of week we’re having. That’s life in the pit.
We’ll get all into MOON PUSSY later. (There’s no casual way of saying that without it coming out weird. I’m discovering that the more I write. Noted. Anyway, we’ll talk more about that band later.) First, let’s quick dip on some of the other finalists.
Beside MOON PUSSY, the album I’ve been listening to most is the one from Darius. It’s post-rock with early Mogwai and Explosion in the Sky fed through a post-noise-rock grinder. Doom Beach is filthy and loud and wrenching. Usurp Synapse is weird and surprising. Obey Cobra takes me through all sorts of genres and twists and turns while feeling part of a grand artistic vision. All these albums are amazing.
I hope you’re all super goddamn pumped to check out…
The Coolest Stuff of The Week | May 8th
Obey Cobra – Mwg Drwg
Genres: Alternative, grunge, post-punk
celebration guns – Enough Already
Genres: Math rock, emo, alternative
The Dharma Chain – Nowhere
Genres: Post-punk, shoegaze, punk
Driftmachine & Ammer – Sonic Behaviour
Genres: Experimental, dub, ambient, samples
Nihiloceros – Dark Ice Balloons
Genres: Indie rock, grunge, power pop
Darius – Murmuration
Genres: Post-rock, post-noise-rock, experimental
GRLwood – I Sold My Soul To The Devil When I Was 12
Genres: Scream pop, alternative, noise pop
Valley Street – S/T
Genres: Weirdo punk, punk, rock
Ui – Sidelong
Genres: Post-punk, post-rock, experimental
Tuff Bluff – S/T
Genres: Post-punk, punk, garage
Tex Patrello – Minotaur
Genres: Art pop, chamber pop, experimental pop
Doom Beach – BURDEN
Genres: Noise rock, screamo, punk
Muslimgauze – Zul’m
Genres: Post-punk, alternative, dub
假日貞操 Virgin Vacation – Dapple Patterns
Genres: Instrumental, krautrock, post-rock
Super Fuzz – S/T
Genres: Egg punk, punk, alternative
TI:ED – an urge to feel authentic
Genres: Post-hardcore, punk, alternative
ME REX – Smilodon
Genres: Math rock, indie rock, alternative
Blush – Propaganda
Genres: Art punk, weirdo punk, post-punk
hana vu – Romanticism
Genres: Alternative, indie rock, garage
Usurp Synapse – Polite Grotesqueries
Genres: Screamo, punk, noisecore
Dead Finks – Eve of Ascension
Genres: Punk, noise rock, post-punk
Manic Vila – Mandatory Fun
Genres: Surf rock, alternative, indie rock
ZOLLE – ROSA
Genres: Noise rock, post-metal, rock
Kee Avil – Spine
Genres: Noise pop, experimental pop, alternative
Argiculture – Living is Easy
Genres: Post-metal, metal, post-rock
MOON PUSSY – DEATH IS COMING
Genres: Noise rock, punk, experimental
Like most of my favorite albums, DEATH IS COMING feels like a piece of art existing out of time. Albums like Pixies’ Surfer Rosa or Modest Mouse’s Moon and Antarctica or pick your favorite Sonic Youth album feel just as strange and fresh today as they did 20, 30 or 40 years ago. This is the effect of a group having their own voice, their own language, and speaking to us directly in that tongue. Instead of being stuck in the moment their album was released, they exist in their own moment outside of everything.
And yeah, MOON PUSSY exists in their own pocket of time with their own language and all that shit.
That’s not to say DEATH IS COMING isn’t of the now. Put this band in a lineup with any of the top noise punk bands, and they fit in with the current pulse of the genre. It’s more that this album has the raw brashness and experimental fervor of early punk and underground music mixed with the fidelity and catchiness of 90s grunge, and all of that is tied up with a distinct sense of what exactly works in noise rock — an entire history up until now to inform the band — creating a product that takes from many different musical eras while having an immense sense-of-self.
Oh is that sense-of-self very important and on full display. One aspect you will find about each MOON PUSSY song, and thus the album as a whole, is it essentially never stops. Some noise is always filling the space, and it’s usually Cristina Cuellar’s end-times bass and/or vocals, assisted most often by Cory Hager’s brutalist drums. Guitarist Ethan Hahn serves to color these songs with ugly stabs and odd riffs, filling in the rest of the space or taking over completely when needed.
But this band knows when to let one instrument drop out briefly or have something switch so the songs don’t just drone on and on and on. One thing I harp on a lot in this column is a band’s ability to work with space, and I especially applaud bands who are able to create space through small movements and changes in their arrangements. MOON PUSSY is yet another master at this, able to convey their changes in a small amount of space.
The result is an unrelenting, uncompromising death-grind of noise.
This is their language. This is where they create their meaning and how. Constant, constant movement that carries the listener along out of time and nearly out of mind. If it weren’t so in our faces and unignorable, it would practically be meditative, especially the way Cuellar’s bass lines tend to descend and ascend up and down, carrying us along. But she’s also screaming at us. And the drums start and stop between machine gun rolls. And the guitar squeals at us to pay attention. Yes, it wants us to groove, but we cannot zone out, and none of these songs will allow us to do so.
If I have one forewarning about DEATH IS COMING, it’s to listen to the album as a whole. This is an ALBUM album, meant to be listened to in one held breath. Checking out a track or two here or there is an injustice to the flow and groove these songs create from one to the next. Find a half hour, sit your ass down, turn this up loud and listen.
