Public Acid's cover art for "Deadly Struggle" by Thomas Sara.
Public Acid’s newest contribution to NC’s hardcore music scene is “Deadly Struggle”. The album was released on February 23, 2024 and has a runtime of fourteen minutes. It has eight tracks; all of them leave you with a desire for a shower after listening.
Public Acid has a few other releases. Most notably is “Condemnation”, an EP released about two years ago, which is just as harsh and thrash-y as “Deadly Struggle”.
To find an album that still makes my skin crawl AND creates a putrid stench of hatred is no easy feat. The more I flounder around in the metal and hardcore scenes, the more unimpressed I become with guttural howls of pain and rage. Public Acid definitely doesn’t re-invent the metal scream or do anything too crazy and new, but “Deadly Struggle” is a pleasantly-sleek, head-whipping release.
Beauty of Horror
My favorite three tracks, “Slow Bleed”, “Ignorance” and “Hang the Leaders” are like Death cradling the dying. They’re a beautiful look at the horrible pains of everyday life. Since beginning my hardcore music fascination, I’ve been able to unlock appreciation for nasty sounds and disgusting imagery.
I can see the beauty that lies in more horrific actions and deeds. That’s because beauty isn’t the same kind of serene natural picture we are always told about. There’s beauty in fear, there’s beauty in blood, there’s beauty in death.
“Deadly Struggle” isn’t glorifying violence (and neither am I, though it sure looks like it). Public Acid captures the nature of corrupt social practices and the fascination with a blood fueled world. They capture and make it beautiful through their destructive music. If you read my other blogs, you can see I’m pretty easily impressed by most musicians and bands I listen to.
To some (and maybe even to me sometimes) Public Acid might be just another one of those hardcore punk bands that sound like every other one, but I get a sense that their ability to capture despair, disgust and destruction will help them prevail the onslaught of current day music industry practices.
The band kicked off their 2024 North American tour back in February, and will perform at Carrboro’s legendary Cat’s Cradle March 26.
If you’re not familiar with Otoboke Beaver (a crime, honestly), there’s still time. This totally rocking band will make for an unforgettable concert experience.
Wild Garage Rock
Self-described as a “Japanese girls ‘knock out or pound cake’ band,” Otoboke Beaver formed in 2009 after the members met at a college music society.
They released their first demo album in 2011 and a live album in 2012, both of which gained traction among Japanese audiences.
Otoboke Beaver began touring internationally in 2016, and have since garnered critical acclaim from numerous sources, including Dave Grohl, Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano, Tom Moreno, and numerous others.
Cover for “SUPER CHAMPON スーパーチャンポン” by Otoboke Beaver
Otoboke Beaver’s garage punk style regularly flirts with madness. However, amid discordant arrangements of guitar and vocals, there’s a perceptible grand design.
Spontaneity is controlled and masterfully cultivated to create a pervading sense of unity among the band’s members.
The band’s description of “knock out or pound cake” is surprisingly apt; their sound constantly alternates between vicious, unbridled energy and idyllic ebullience.
Cover for “Love Is Short” by Otoboke Beaver
Subject matter comes directly from the band members themselves, drawing from romantic misadventures, grievances with chauvinism, sexual desire and the monotony of the daily grind.
I have no time to spend for you seeking for a one-night stand, old fart has come abso-f–king-lutely you’re out of question so full-of-yourself old dirty fart
shut up shut up shut up and Don’t look down on me!
“Dirty old fart is waiting for my reaction” – Otoboke Beaver
Cover for “‘yobantoite mojo’/’don’t call me MOJO'” by Otoboke Beaver
While the band doesn’t consider themselves to be distinctly feminist, a group of Japanese women loudly and irreverently declaring their desires in a white and male-dominated genre is nothing short of groundbreaking.
Otoboke Beaver’s latest album, “Super Champon,” came out in 2022, and all I have to say is this: if the band’s setlist draws at all from this release, audiences are in for a riotous time.
If y’all haven’t noticed, the second part of Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” movies has been in theaters for over a week. The absolutely epic nature of “Dune” continues in its second movie and relies heavily on a soundtrack again written and composed by Hans Zimmer, one of Hollywood’s premiere sound designers for blockbuster films like “Interstellar”, “Kung Fu Panda 4” and Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy.
I can be a very picky person when it comes to book adaptations. Especially for books that are impossible to adapt to a screen perfectly. “Dune” is definitely one of those books. However, the music and cinematography bring the world of Arrakis to life. This is the strong point of the two Villeneuve “Dune” films for me. They are absolutely some of the most beautiful representations of Arrakis imaginable.
“Dune: Part Two” opens with soft sounds and a slowly waking planet and people. Zimmer captured this extremely well with tracks like “Beginnings Are Such Delicate Times”. We slowly traverse the golden path of Paul Atreides becoming the Lisan al Gaib, the prophet and messiah of the Fremen people of Dune.
Zimmer’s soundtrack builds as the tension in the story begins to weave towards war. In “Dune: Part Two” there’s abundant imagery and scenes of the Harkonnen clan on their cold, black sunned planet, Giedi Prime, that Zimmer again captures well with “Harkonnen Arena”. It’s music drowning in fear, violence and greed. I love the way it makes the pasty, bald-headed Harkonnens more treacherous just with some epic music.
The scenes on Giedi Prime are also unique and beautiful too. They are absolutely some of my favorite interpretations from the source material (though I do wish they made Baron and Feyd Harkonnen even nastier like the books). The black and white coliseum scene is the most goosebump inducing gladiator fight scene I’ve seen in a film to date.
In the second half of the film, the music’s rise in tempo with the imminent war helps quicken the heart beat more. There’s a ton of plot points in the book I wish I saw represented in this section of the movie (like Paul and Chani’s child that gets killed and young Alia running around talking at a few months old), but adaptations can’t be perfect. It’d take years to get through a perfect adaptation of “Dune”. I’m satisfied with what I was able to witness in theater, but still longing for perfection even when I know it won’t arrive.
Fear is the mind killer for people that love dictators,
With a sound somewhere between DEVO, Molchat Doma and Portion Control, High-Functioning Flesh is an industrial hall essential.
Much like the word “flesh,” the band’s music is carnal, tactile and vivid.
And as per usual, I found them entirely by accident.
Expanses of “The Flesh”
Often abbreviated to HFF, the band emerged in Los Angeles after Susan Subtract and Gregory Vand attended a Youth Code show.
The band’s debut album, “A Unity of Miseries – A Misery of Unities” came out on DKA Records in 2014. The album struck a chord in the industry with its evocative style inspired by sci-fi, body horror and archetypal punk angst
According to the band, their work “seeks to revive us all from our spectacle-induced coma,” presenting a sobering sound to rend the veil of capitalist monotony.
Cover for “A Unity of Miseries – A Misery of Unities” by High-Functioning Flesh
HFF cites Cabaret Voltaire and Portion Control as major stylistic influences, though the duo certainly brings their own qualities to the craft through elaborate instrumentation and production effects.
“A Unity of Miseries – A Misery of Unities” is a dynamic album, highly tactile and hypnotically raucous through its sprawls of synth, drum and fried vocals. Its industrial quality is heavy-handed and walloping like metal slamming against metal.
HFF’s sophomore album, “Definite Structures,” came out in May 2016 through Dais Records. The album reflects the progression of the band’s electro-industrial style, leaning into further experimentation with sound layering and auditory effects. The album is a kaleidoscope, evoking the brutalist edge of Skinny Puppy.
Cover for “Definite Structures” by High-Functioning Flesh
For this release, the band turned to mellower vocals with less distortion, leaning back into the style explored with their first album.
HFF’s most recent release, “Culture Cut,” came out in 2017. A blind comparison of “Culture Cut” against “Human Remains” would almost suggest the existence of two bands.
Cover for “Culture Cut” by High-Functioning Flesh
“Culture Cut” clearly draws more from the same inspirations as “Definite Structures.”
According to Dais Records, each new release highlights the band’s evoltion “from a handful of lo-fi flashback demos to aggressively realized synth-punk dance floor anthems.”
And Dais Records is wholly correct. The music of High-Functioning Flesh belongs on the dancefloor for leather and PVC-clad youths to gyrate to.
