Bandcamp Picks of the Week 5/17/17
Bandcamp Picks of the Week, where each week, we pick picks from Bandcamp
Days N’ Daze – CRUSTFALL
Genre: Folk Punk
Favorite Tracks: “I Wanna See It Burn,” “Insta Mental Breakdown,” “World War 3,” “Anchor,”
Yes, crust punks can be obnoxious. Either they’re trust fund kids playing dress up as homeless, or they’re just hippies in different outfits with a hard-on for Nietzsche; no matter what, they can be a lot to deal with. All that readily acknowledged, Days N’ Daze are still a great band well worth your time. On CRUSTFALL, they seem to have gotten even tighter as a band and their sound has benefitted from some actual production value. That’s not saying that they’re not still raw as hell—they are, but the benefits of having someone help them with mixing are apparant. What’s great about a band like Days is that they improve by doubling down. 2013’s ROUGE TAXIDERMY felt like a masterstroke in earnest self-destruction-as-rebellion at the time it came out, and it’s fantastic to see the band get more precise in their songwriting four years later. The dual vocals by Jesse and Whitney still make the band stand apart from their contemporaries, and their ability to scream over each other is as effective as ever. It’s hard to find much punk rock that feels authentic these days, but if it’s to be found anywhere, it’s from bands like Days. Sink into the warm abyss and embrace the chaos here. [Carter Moon]
Slow Warm Death – S/T
Genre: Garage Punk
Favorite Tracks: “ALONE,” “HOLY GHOST,” “KILL YOU,” “CONVERSATION,”
I’ll spare you one of my typical long-winded rants, but from 2009-2011, a band called Snowing ripped through the emo world, kicking off the latest “revival” or “wave” that the genre is (arguably) still riding now. Frontman John Galm became an icon of the scene and idol to many of those whose lives were affected by his music. And then, the band broke up and he next resurfaced with Slow Warm Death. One of the most successful career reinventions I’ve come across, perhaps knowing he could never really rejoin his parent genre for fear of critical malfeasance, SLOW WARM DEATH gives no hint of the former predilections of its creators, instead offering a guilt-free 26-ish minutes of swaggering, beer-drenched, blues-y garage punk. This is summer backyard house show music, opening act at at a small OC festival music, an unadorned and unpretentious catharsis for a man set free from his historically supposed genre parameters. A little bit of the White Stripes, a little bit of surf, Hell, even a little bit of doom (“KILL YOU”), SLOW WARM DEATH is just simply fun, and I think for those who were fans of Snowing, the value of John Galm making that kind of music speaks for itself. You can listen to it here. [Thomas Seraydarian]
