Skull Practitioners make post-punk that I can best describe with one word – immediacy. Their first EP in five years, Death Buy, is a wild record of squawking guitars, urgent drums, and wall-shaking bass.
Take the the title track, for instance. Jason Victor‘s guitars on it threaten to blow out your speakers almost as soon as he begins playing. He lets you finally breathe close to the four-minute mark, but Kenneth Levine‘s bass never lets you relax. “Grey No More” is a pedal-to-the-metal garage rocker with lyrics like “Last stop to nowhere, dreams are dead and gone, lost in the ether.” to remind you not to look back as you run down zombies in a desert wasteland with your spike-covered Mack truck.
“I was born into a head of confusion,” Victor sings at the beginning of “The Beacon” – a song about the baffling nature of identity in modern culture. Drummer Alex Baker puts down seriously hot chops throughout it, and Victor’s guitar roars like a jet engine. It’s over before you have time to lace up your running shoes and lock the door behind you.
Levine’s bass groove and Baker’s snappy beats are a great foundation for “Miami” – a ten minute-plus instrumental track that has Victor upping the reverb on his guitar. Victor experiments with different soundscapes while Levine and Baker never miss a beat and keep us and Victor from floating out of orbit. The breakdown and then the comeback around the six-minute mark is outstanding.
It’s a great EP, one of the best I’ve heard in 2019.
Keep your mind open.
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