In the forthcoming dark days for the United States, it seems unnecessary to say, but, punk music is more relevant and necessary than ever. Especially good, smart punk music. Enter Urochromes, whose unsettling brand of bleak fury speaks volumes to the anxious and angry. Perfect timing for the stunningly shit end to a stunningly shit year. Their Night Bully EP, due out January 27 on Wharf Cat, explores turmoils both internal and external, loaded with pummeling rhythms and frontman Jackieboy’s thunderously resonant vocals, which don’t beat you over the head so much as they do absorb into your bloodstream and make you quake in bodily upheaval from the inside out. Four blistering songs and remixes by Western Mass buds Boy Harsher purport nothing but the best kind of bad feeling.
The lead single, and first track off the EP, “My Dickies,” is an immediate disarray of the senses, its opening blast of instruments kicking your legs out from under you and knocking the wind out of you. It takes a second just to gather yourself to comprehend a song started and you’re still at the starting line. It sits you down and says, pay attention to me. Twangs of guitar enter and exit in the blink of an eye and you’re almost led to believe the pounding pace of everything will let up, but it does not. It’s heavy as all hell the whole way through, and you’re left like a defeated Mortal Kombat character, wobbling on your feet in a horrid stupor, an unknowable voice ominously saying, “Finish him.” Or her. Start track 2.
