Despite comprising five veterans of the hardcore and punk scenes, Philadelphia’s BITTER BRANCHES sound like anything but an old band. Their debut full-length Your Neighbors Are Failures drips with all the urgency and fury that you’d typically expect from groups some 20 years their younger. It’s a record of sneering, scathing sarcasm – an incisive reaction to an increasingly infuriating human existence. Naturally, it isn’t particularly hopeful, but it does provide an outpouring of exasperation to which many are sure to relate. If ever there was a soundtrack to screaming at strangers in the street, this is it.
Honestly, it would be impossible to start in any other place here than with the performance of vocalist Tim Singer. Best known as the frontman of mathcore/metalcore pioneers DEADGUY, Singer provides a mesmerising menace throughout Your Neighbors Are Failures. His disdain for the world around him is very Henry Rollins-esque, and no-one really manages to escape his ire. Whether he’s set his sights on one of hardcore’s more typical foes in the police as on Along Came A Bastard (“Let’s get some lipstick for this pig”), or railing against the random stranger who makes the mistake of encouraging him to smile on Have You Tried Jogging? (“I’m not yours to fix”), you can practically feel his hatred pouring through every one of these ten tracks.
Of course, the rest of BITTER BRANCHES do a great job of matching Singer’s frustration throughout Your Neighbors Are Failures. Rather than following much of the hardcore scene into chug-city, the band adopt a far more angular approach here. They often evoke more of a 90s post-hardcore sound that isn’t all that common in today’s scene, with wiry guitar leads sitting atop lumbering basslines and propulsive, tom-heavy drum work. It lends the record an unhinged, chaotic atmosphere, one well suited to Singer’s deranged musings. The production is spot on too, allowing the band to bleed into and bounce off one another with unbridled intensity.
While its 40-minute runtime may be pretty long by hardcore standards, Your Neighbors Are Failures never really loses its listeners. Singer in particular maintains the intensity throughout, and the music itself boasts enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. Ninth track Monsters Among Us certainly provides a later highlight, and a relative dynamic shift at that. It’s a quiet, creeping piece, with Singer delivering a snarling, anguished monologue in which he defeatedly asserts “the monsters are real” and “this world is cruel”. It sets up the similarly strong closer Show Me Yours, a lengthy track whose winding, hypnotic riffs build and build to a final manic conclusion.
Off the strength of this record, it’s clear that BITTER BRANCHES aren’t some hastily cobbled together supergroup looking to make a quick paycheck. This is a fired up and furious five-piece whose combined experience – musical and otherwise – is surely their greatest strength. Where most bands zig, BITTER BRANCHES zag, and in doing so they’ve produced something that feels genuinely urgent and fresh. It may have its obvious antecedents in the 90s, but Your Neighbors Are Failures never comes across as derivative. Clearly there’s life in these old dogs yet.
Rating: 8/10
Your Neighbors Are Failures is set for release on February 25th via Equal Vision Records/Rude Records.
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