Neighborhood Brats sound seriously pissed on their new album, Recovery (Deranged Records). And why not, the Bay Area (where the band was founded in 2009) has turned into a fucked up (and expensive) social experiment where snooty dot-commers are making it hard on the punks. "We Lost Control," off their new LP, seethes with toxic disdain for the yuppie slime that forced the Brats to move to L.A. in 2011; their current hood being Long Beach, a gritty beach town that seems to be the natural habitat for their violently urbanized, Black Flag-influenced tone.The Brats are the brainchild of two Midwestern outcasts (singer Jenny Angelillo and guitarist George Rager), driven to revive the glory days of L.A. punk at places like the Masque and Al's Bar. The days when surf gangs enforced shit in the South Bay. While the new record is titled Recovery, it's really more of meth-induced bombing raid, instead of rehab for the L.A. four-piece. The Brats now sound like they want to party in some abandoned, John Carpenter-imagined wasteland of punks hopped-up on anti-depressants and Rocket to Russia.Their sound is the mutated result of what happens when your guitar player listens to "Nervous Breakdown" enough to actually have one. And when your lead singer aerobicizes to Jane Fonda workout tapes as a kid. Which is all true. And now, after a few caffeinated songwriting sessions, they've given us Recovery: a 23-minute melodic hardcore statement driven by Angelillo's need for free psychology, and Rager's scorched-earth guitar riffage. It's as if they need to be psychoanalyzed for a permatrip that has them playing like thermonuclear annihilation is upon us. Like Ronald Reagan is still President. And if this was 1977, they'd be signed to Dangerhouse as the disturbing (and bloodstained) opener for the Avengers.Recovery is available on September 29 via Deranged Records. You can stream the entire album below, which includes the single "One Wasted Year."
Advertisement