Labels: 625 Thrash Records – Discos Huelga
Review by: Chaz Hewitt
Seems like plenty of people on the cboard are already pretty into this band, so I’ll keep it snappy.
Punch are from San Francisco, and play female fronted, full throttle, absolutely raging hardcore punk.
The opener is a possible favourite (it’s pretty hard to pick one); some gnarly feedback, a bass note strung out, some more feedback, a drum roll, and then all hell breaks loose. Lightning quick drumming, ferocious guitars, meghan’s furious vocals, and some awesome half-time riffs that drop in and out.
From then on it’s more of the same (in the best possible way). Every song is carried out with a real intensity that I feel is lacking in a lot of modern hardcore. The vocals are screamed with total rage, to the backing of a band that sound like they’re playing their instruments as hard and fast as they possible can. I attempted to write an essay whilst listening to this last weekend, and failed fucking miserably (too much air drumming).
Some pretty cool lyrics as well; on “Ol’factory’ somewhere beneath the rage Meghan yells “Deodorant and Alzheimer’s? Deodorant and breast cancer? Forget it. You’re over reacting. Research shows nine out of ten consumers prefer the smell of chemicals to people, which certainly makes it easier to sell”. Cool.
So, if you like your hardcore really fast and hard I’d pick this up. One of my favourite records of the year, and hopefully they’ll get over to Europe soon.