CRUELSTER - MAKE THEM WONDER WHY
CRUELSTER have spent seven years since their last record carefully assembling an insular world, a model train village with a sniper in the clocktower and a miniature fistfight in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
I've been addicted to CRUELSTER's rabid, fractured, indisputably Cleveland hardcore since the Potatoe Boys LP in 2013, but it's clear from the first proper track "I'm Going to Ukraine" this is a massive level up: the recording quality is crisp and massive, allowing you to catch lines like "I WAS SHOT POINT BLANK IN THE CHEST WITH A RIFLE" in enormous stereo. The messier lo-fi stuff will always have my heartburn, but I really appreciate how much time clearly went into making this record. Songs like "Jerks" and "Nuclear Word" are obvious contenders for big hit repeaters (especially with their insane music videos), but just about all of them could be some other band's best song (I'm personally partial to "Croup" and "Sent Down Youth").
Their songwriting has always been left-field and catchy, but in keeping with the improved production, this is amazing: whip-crack start-stop drums and fearlessly stupid guitar lines, fife synthesizer and obnoxious samples, lead singing that alternates between bellowing and being spit through gritted teeth, all backed up by layered gang vocals that make everything feel like an anthem, no matter how obtuse.
On a similar note, maybe we can gaze on the album cover, looking like Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights carved into a public school desk, to get a clue as to CRUELSTER's thoughts on our sick society. To my eye, they're a deeply political band from a perspective that feels hyper-modern and refreshing: informed by the internet, scattershot but aggrieved, dripping with the feeling that we're all being screwed. Frantic obsessions with Julian Assange, Belarus, psychic transmissions from the mayor and the history of Egypt make the album feel like a debate exploding in a Call of Duty lobby, a Civil War re-enactor trying to get you into Bitcoin, or those AI Minecraft videos of Family Guy characters talking about BlackRock.
In other words, true American hardcore. Take cover.
Released by Convulse Records. Listen here: https://convulserecords.bandcamp.com/album/make-them-wonder-why
emmatonkss