When I was in college, I met a girl. Not just any girl mind you, but the kind that every punk/hardcore kid dreams of meeting during those ever-so-awkward years your parents refer to as “higher education.” She wore all black, had more tattoos than a Russian prison inmate, and regularly wore a Weekend Nachos shirt to class. One day, she told me that she was friends with the dudes in a band called Sex Prisoner, who at the time played as a three piece (bass, vocals, and drums). I went home, looked them up, and found some old footage of them playing a living room somewhere. I had never seen/heard anything that raw before; I fucking loved it. With the addition of guitar on some of their more recent releases, Sex Prisoner has quickly become one of the most punishing sounds to spawn from the southwest. The power violence/hardcore champions of Arizona have returned with Tannhäuser Gate to provide your ears with what will either be the soundtrack to your eternal demise, or at the very least, some bad ass shit you’ll listen to at the gym. Now, I think its important to note that lifting is a key aspect of the Sex Prisoner experience. Like being a fan of bands like Harms Way, being a Sex Prisoner fan requires a strict lifting regiment. Quite frankly, if you think you can skip leg day and still love Sex Prisoner, you’re dead fucking wrong…NEVER SKIP LEG DAY, BRO!!! Tannhäuser Gate is the official pre-workout for the hardcore community; in fact, I hit a new max on the bench press just reading the title of this nasty, untamed, beast of a record.
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From start to finish, this record puts all who attempted to make music in 2016 to shame. The Tuscon legends offer us 16 absolute bangers to fight, fuck, and most importantly, lift to. If you’ve been around hardcore/power violence at all for the last couple of years, then you already know that my rambling about the band’s sheer power is futile. The Kennedy brothers are the Salt ‘n Peppa of Power Violence; Gilbert Flores is a fucking human drum machine; and that guy they have on guitar…he’s okay, too! Look, people – at this point, it’s safe to say that there are only two kinds of records that exist in this world: shitty records and Tannhaüser Gate. Grab a drink, fight a stranger, and blast this record until you’ve lost all your friends. You won’t regret it.
Label: Deep Six Records
