For the past several years, great bands seem to spring up right out of the polluted industrial soil of West Oakland. The humanitarian disaster of the landscape and bureaucratic historic neglect of the people only fuel the fury and precision of local musicians that refuse to be bogged down and swept away into the dereliction they’re all too familiar with. The latest outfit from the crew that brought us Near Dark Fest is Adrenochrome, a grim punk eulogy for the long-passed deathrock heyday. Blasting with militant, boxy snare rolls and all of our favorite flanged-out bass driving the riffs, this tell-tale revision blends with accuracy the two camps of British anarcho-punk and West Coast goth.
Single note guitar leads fall from the sky like harbingers of a looming air raid before descending into full fledged carpet bombings accompanied by double-tracked wails of aggression and damnation of an approach so angular but retaining enough melody to never loosen its jarring grasp on your attention. The lyrical themes span from the classic spookiness of a phantasm wracked hellscape to quasi-political conspiracy theories such as mind control and mass media distractions. Listening to this debut EP is witnessing the birth of abominable infant whose adolescense is guaranteed to spark a dense fire burning through the goth-o-sphere, never to be extinguished until the world itself wipes us all out.
by Carlos Garcia
