This week’s Rock-a-Ramas were written by Mandy Brownholtz, Fred Pessaro, Zachary Lipez, and Maria Sherman. Read last week’s reviews 

Last summer, when those of us who do not give a shit about prestige television were tricked into mainlining whatever new drama HBO Max had to offer to fuel our post-lockdown pandemic water cooler talk (bonus points awarded if the protagonist had a goofy ass accent, or some hot actor was made considerably less hot, for the capital-D Drama), I got sucked into 

. (Mostly because some of the many teens on the show were in a band that would 

, and partially because when you live in Philadelphia for some time, “anything remotely related to Philly” becomes a superficial part of your personality. Until you die.) Anyway, one of the kids on this show had an amazing t-shirt collection of, like, mostly PA/Delco bands, but then also one sick L.O.T.I.O.N. shirt, New York’s preeminent 

-themed dystopic digital hardcore band, and I thought that was hard as hell. Not as hard as their new record, 

, but hard.

I give this 9 outta 10 jawns. The show gets, like, seven. I didn’t stick around to find out who killed whatsherface.

Good scum shit. One of my favorite records of the year so far, no jokes here. Just real dirtbag hours.

Another week, another Rock-A-Rama, another unanswered email to a publicist. 

. I can’t tell if this is music journalism or online dating. I wanted to listen to this record! I wanted to love it, too, to see what all the fuss is about. The only Rina fans I know are very cool people. In fact, one such person, a close friend who is OVER THIRTY and OWNS PROPERTY IN NEW YORK CITY got kicked out of her after party at Webster Hall for doing ketamine in the bathroom and then SNUCK BACK IN, so…I don’t know. Any music that evokes this sort of reckless behavior in otherwise responsible adults gets five stars in my book, even if I haven’t heard it. Rina, I would have given you the world!

One decade and a few months ago, I went to Chaos in Tejas in Austin, TX—R.I.P., the best music fest there ever was and ever will be, Amen. Confoundingly or simply coincidentally (depending on who you ask) Two Door Cinema Club was headlining Stubb’s while, like, Hoax played the recycling plant. Anyway, Austin became a confluence of subcultures: crusties and moms escorting their daughters to see good ol’ TDCC.

As a plain-clothes punk-adjacent person, I was a prime target for questioning. Mostly, the aforementioned moms wanted to know “Why was everyone so dressed up?” D-beat is a costume; Earth is Halloween. It was fucking weird! And I still don’t know what this band sounds like. And frankly, this story is stupid and self-indulgent, but how else were we going to hit the word count? Mama’s gotta eat.

 wish this didn’t rock. This is really capable and (gulp) impressive Mathcore stuff that can sit comfortably next to early Dillinger Escape Plan in its ability to wow and brutalize. But holy cow, I refuse to wear a shirt with that name, or even mutter it out loud. In the canon of names, I might even prefer if they had one of those semi-annoying but also kinda funny names like Cock and Ball Torture, or Gutalax, or Hot Buttered Anal, or Evil Edna’s Horror Toilet, or maybe, literally anything else. Botch, we need you.

To me, Yungblud looks like Jack Bannon; the guy who, on the TV series 

, plays Batman’s future butler as a hot and dangerous piece of ass. But it could just be the accent. Anyway, I like Yungblud. I like his goonish charm. I like his 

. I like the fact that he seems like he only knows Jarvis Cocker from the 

 movies. I like that, when he’s not wasting time being The Actually Pretty Good Machine Gun Kelly, he sings songs that’ll fit just fine on the soundtrack to the inevitable Netflix remake of 

 a little concerned that Yungblud might only know ten words, and that the biggest word he knows is “obituary” (and only because he shaves it down to three syllables). And I’m not going to pretend a full third of this album isn’t simply awful; rote corporate pop-punk written by the algorithm that got kicked out of the 

That said, the other two-thirds are dandy. Yes, the lyrics are pretty silly and/or emotionally monosyllabic, but they aren’t necessarily any sillier or emotionally monosyllabic than Placebo lyrics, and that shit goes for days. Plus, rhyming “alright” with “alright” is a time honored rock move, and repeating “shame shame shame” is just adjusting for the audience. I mean, the singer that Yung Blood's vocal rasp—in its best moments—most closely approximates is Marianne Faithfull. And only a pedantic cretin would complain when Ms. Faithfull repeated “guilt,” “bad,” and “blood, '' over and over, like she was teaching all the bad boys and girls in the rock ‘n’ roll nursery the only ABCs they’d ever need.

If the best song on the album, “The Funeral,” is basically Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself,” that’s okay, too. Both songs do what faux-bad-boy self-pity pop-rock is supposed to: make 15-year-olds ache for how epic life is going to be once they turn 16. If you're going to be a “fake” punk (whatever that means), you might as well pull from the source. And no self respecting Teen Idol Rebel Yeller would bother pulling out a thesaurus, not when the only thing the kids really want is more, more, more.

Before people started to mix in shoegaze, trap beats, and even took dares on 4Chan, Norway was ruling this shit. This sounds like a throwback to that era.

The Mexico City-based punk rock label, Cintas Pepe, started strong in 2010 by releasing a trebly bumout masterpiece called 

. The compilation of end-time punk bands from Mexico and Peru was scabrous and wild enough to give the Nuke York scene of the time a run for its money, and cacophenous enough to inspire the remnants of the “mysterious guy” hardcore scene to give up their day jobs (of being mysterious) and go shoegaze. Since then, Cintas Pepe has put out almost exactly one album of equally dismaying scuzz a year, and each album is invariably one of the best punk albums of that year. Last year it was Peru’s 

. This year it’s the return—the first peep since their 2019 (Steve Albini recorded/mixed) 

; the band of existential bullies and gloom munitionists led by Cintas Pepe’s co-founder himself, Yecatl Peña. As violent and burly as Ojo Por Ojo’s music was before, 

 shows the band sweating out so much ugliness that what’s left is almost good looking; like your crust punk friend who does some modeling on the side, but only to buy ketamine for him and his dog. And if you’re ever tempted to try to tell your friend that he’s too pretty to die so young, you figure, fuck it, you’ll just save the nice words for his eulogy. Some people just aren’t made for the world. Sure, you’ll miss him, but the sooner he checks out, the sooner you can get the puppy to a vet. 

 sounds like day three of your friend’s wake.

If the reader will forgive some (100 percent accurate) hyperbole; between new records by Morrow, Rigorous Institution, and now Ojo Por Ojo, we are fully in the midst of a new crust punk golden age. No gods or masters, so you can do what you want but, for myself, I’m never bathing again. I’m going to grow a single dreadlock. I’m getting earspools the size of tea cup saucers. I’m going out right now and adopting a ferret. I’m going to name him “Robert Squattinson.”

Dad Grass x CREEMBud Howdy! Dad Stash Can

CREEM No.2 T-Shirt

LOADING...

Subscribe to CREEM

The creem archive

LOADING...

THE CREEM NEWSLETTER

Your Bag

Why look at a shopping cart if you didn’t put anything in it?