Reds arrived during a funny patch, first time around. The golden days of Witching Hour / Level Plane / Hand Held Heart screamo were a rapidly-fading memory, with the bands who still held true to any form of (scr)e(a)mo generally tending towards rote sub-Orchid skramz while other players tumbled into tedious noise, drone, black metal or mysterious guy hardcore experiments that allowed them to shuck off their skinny jeans and their HeartattaCk-approved politics in the same smooth motion.
Running counter to this were bands like Bullets*In, Tiny Hawks and the cast of the excellent, overlooked ‘Wayfarers All’ comp: acts for whom emo was still political and still a part of punk, and followed a roadmap laid out by the likes of Rites Of Spring, The Hated, Ignition and Rain.
All of this wild generalising brings us to a new album by Brooklyn band Reds, who were another such act: they released a very good demo and an even better LP of earnest, desperate, revolution summer-sounding punk before vanishing from view. Fast-forward 20 years (the time it takes, I guess, to get through a bunch of Adult Life Bullshit) and we now have the band’s difficult second album which is, glory be, very good indeed.
‘The Truth Of Impermanence’ sees the band staying true to their original sound: raw, raggedy emo punk that, had it been born in the mid 80s, would have fit right in on Dischord’s ‘State Of The Union’ comp. The music is played with passion, conviction and assurance, but it’s also fraught and spiderwebbed with hairline cracks of a type that come with the stresses and strains that an extra couple of decades place on one’s voice, nerves and body. The singer frequently sounds like he’s blowing his voice out – his performance on ‘The Body’ makes me what to suck a throat sweet in sympathy – while ‘Slow Decay’ has a delicious, Fugazi-gone-chaotically-wrong vibe that suggests a band pushing into the red with everything they have. Elsewhere, there are Moss Icon / Universal Order Of Armageddon vibes to be found in ‘Wounds’, while ‘Energy’ strikes me that it might be Reds’ version of the Embrace song ‘Spoke’, both in terms of sentiment and sonics.
The straining-at-the-leash vibe means the album zips by in a flash, but it’s also weighty enough to withstand multiple back-to-back listens: honest, raw and absolutely furious punk rock that serves to charge you with its pissed-off energy. What a record, and what a comeback!