There was a time when each mundane indignity of grownup life had a corresponding Seinfeld episode. Now these indignities encourage grimly humorous Pissed Denims songs. Demoralized about our dehumanizing healthcare business? There’s a Pissed Denims track for that. Depressed about going bald in early maturity? There’s a Pissed Denims track ranting about that. Fantasizing about your blowhard venture supervisor’s demise? These freaks have a track for you, too.
20 years into their profession, the Pennsylvania-bred punks are the poets laureate of pathetic males flailing towards their very own obsolescence. (That’s a praise—to painting a personality is to not concern your self with the character’s likability.) On Half Divorced, their first album in seven years, Pissed Denims haven’t overhauled their sound or reinvented themselves or “matured” as artists a lot as they’ve amassed a brand new stock of contemporary miseries to show into scuzz-punk tantrums, from catalytic converter theft (“[Stolen] Catalytic Converter”) to crippling medical debt (“Sixty-Two Thousand {Dollars} in Debt”).
Let different bands deal with the political and structural causes of late-capitalist decline; along with his guttural howl, vocalist Matt Korvette has all the time been higher at sweating the small stuff. He’s in high-quality kind on “Helicopter Mum or dad,” yowling in regards to the micromanaging tendencies of bougie dad and mom (“Why ya respiratory down the again of their neck!?”) over a sludge-metal riff that oozes like overflowing sewage. It could be the funniest track about parenting since Randy Newman’s “Love Story (You and Me).” The band additional indulges its comedic aspect on “In all places Is Dangerous,” an amusingly particular travelogue of ills. The playful call-and-response phase—enumerating completely different cities and the explanations they suck (“Philadelphia/Trashy streets/San Francisco/There’s no extra freaks!”)—evokes the humor-infused punk of the Lifeless Milkmen greater than any hardcore reference factors.
If Half Divorced has a declare at being Pissed Denims’ funniest album, it’s not their most musically stimulating. “Helicopter Mum or dad” and “Junktime,” a half-spoken yarn about poisonous waste fallout, are exceptions—sludgy, slow-burning eruptions that showcase the band’s expertise for stress and launch, goaded by Korvette’s throat-scraping anti-charisma. The remainder of the file performs it comparatively straight, with fast and soiled hardcore outbursts like “Killing All of the Unsuitable Individuals” and “Alive With Hate” that summon loads of bludgeoning power however little in the best way of memorable riffs or refrains.
