ALBUM REVIEW: DEATHBLOW - Open Season - Sewer Mouth Records
Twelve minutes of music.
Twelve minutes of Punk Rock music.
Twelve minutes of some of the best hardcore it has been my privilege to review.
It's an EP, so twelve minutes is to be expected. Fortunately, all twelve minutes of Deathblow's Open Season (Sewer Mouth Records) is punk as f***.
Hardcore punk like M.O.D., S.O.D., Suicidal Tendencies, and their mid/late-eighties contemporaries made doesn't seem to have a huge audience in my western New York stomping grounds, which is a ruddy shame. I would go to see these guys in a heartbeat.
Opening with title track "Open Season," brain-melting power takes over, revealing just how political these guys are. So glad they're on the right side of history. Us lefties need outlets for their rage, too.
"Deny Defend Dispose" has some powerful messaging about America's righteously inequitable health are system. The guitar solos they manage to cram into these twelve minutes help make Open Season feel longer and "Deny Defend Dispose" allows Holson Grossl and Adam Kelly to shred with glorious abandon.
Unusually introspective "Tormentor" follows, boiling with anger. Holson Grossl (also vocalist) aims the gut-wrenching frustration of many at the inchoate tormentors of most non-oligarch Americans. "Tormentor" is nowhere near as pointed as "Deny Defend Dispose" or "Open Season," but the simmering unfocused fury of 21st Century culture makes this one almost anthemic (were it more, you know, anthemic.)
"Never Again" takes a minute to get to Grossl's vocals, while Paul Lachika and Rob Larson treat us to a ferocious display of how bass and drums respectively are essential to the sound of Deathblow and the Hardcore genre generally. Normally background and easily dismissed, the rhythm guys deliver the gasoline that fuel all those black-eye producing mosh pits. "Never Again" may be one of the most effectively subversive pleas for ending the genocide in Palestine as well.
Twelve minutes.
I wish there was more.
Few enough bands wear their left-wing politics so brazenly any more. Besides Dropkick Murphys, I'm having some trouble coming up with anything this decade. The right has a huge percentage of Country Music (and they can have it) but us lefties have to be satisfied with the Murphys and old copies of Laaz Rockit's Surf Nicaragua and Dead Kennedys stuff. We thought we had a lot to rage against during Reagan and H.W. Bush. We hadn't seen anything.
I'm gonna stop myself here (this rant could take a while) and simply give these twelve minutes of mind-blowing slam dance fodder a full ten and a strong encouragement to buy this now.
Buy the album here: https://deathblow1.bandcamp.com/album/open-season
10 / 10
LARRY ROGERS
Larry Rogers, Ghost Cult Magazine, Deathblow, Sewer Mouth Records, M.O.D., S.O.D., Suicidal Tendencies, Dropkick Murphys, Laaz Rockit, Dead Kennedys, Holson Grossl, Adam Kelly, Paul Lachika, Rob Larson, Hardore Punk Rock, Yugoboy Productions, Yugoboy's Stereo
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