Black Button

 

Shitty screenshot I took of the Kevin McCormick promo video for Black Button

  

Black Button is a quite new band from the very prolific Richmond, Virginia, a new band which has been around since 2019 or something. The band features members of, what some call, the "artier" bands of the Richmond punk scene: Slump, which I've always failed to properly describe (and to properly enjoy for that matters), and Teenage Cenobite which weird and trashy space-opera synth-punk definitely cruises outside the box.

 

 It all starts with this 2019 demo tape and its cool cover art by Ricardo Vicente Jose Ruiz.

  I would describe this demo as a cool mix between the Soundgarden-influenced heavy punk (did I hear grunge?) of Slump and a more Richmond-made hardcore punk sound, the lot reminding me a bit of what Give was trying to do in DC a few years ago (without much success in my opinion though).

 

 

 

Recorded on a 8-track cassette recorder, it sounds like a demo all right but with a good enough quality to make it fairly enjoyable (which is far from being the case of every punk demos). The songs are mostly built as sequences of fast punk parts and some slower parts on which the guitarist(s) can indulge themselves to play with their fingers along the fretboard. I love the fast parts, I am a bit hesitant about the slow ones though (too much guitar solo is a crime!) but overall it's all quite good to be honest. 

 

 

The Untitled middle track gives a cool interlude in the vein of 70s psych rock with a long speech, before taking us back to business with the slow, but good, No One To Blame and the fast, and very punk (but too much guitar!), Bring The War Home.

So it's a pretty cool demo which, despite a too pronounced taste for annoying guitar parts, managed to draw my attention.

 

But let's get to what motivates this short post: the new I Want To Be In Control EP, out on 11pm Records (the worthy successor of Grave Mistake and No Way Records in Richmond), which was released on the very first day of this already "amazing" new year.

With only one song from the demo (Black Button, rerecorded as a shorter version), this 7-track EP is mostly new material, and there's no time for disappointment here. Starting with a Crass-inspired ironic speech about the American military industry (think Asylum), Black Button jumps back immediately after into the most hardcore part of their game with a powerful and uncluttered version of their eponymous song.

 

No time to rest as Star Spangled Tanner keeps hammering in our eardrums a mean and angry political hardcore punk, resting only for a few seconds with a spoken part recalling the first track, before finishing us off with a brutal thrill. And here comes the slower and heavier, but so angry, Casualties Of Progress, which develops some kind of enjoyable hatred groove before exploding in another nasty hardcore punk conclusion.

 

I want To Be In Control: Damn I love those song beginnings, when the angry singer harangues the captivated crowd to the background of a slow and heavy, but a bit weird, punk tune. Is there some late Black Flag around here ? And then comes Praying for Peace where the guitar manages to slowly build a jumpy tension around the vocals and stomping drums, taking us to the verge of a nervous breakdown, without falling into the "too much guitar" bias of the demo this time.
Joni Mitchell Birthday Song (is that really a tribute to Joni?) beautifully concludes this great EP with a mentally ill, super tensed, punk track which leaves all the needed space to the singer to "throw up" a whole bunch of screamed vocals.

 

To make it short: This EP is super good.

The band keeps the best of the demo, focussing more on their punk and hardcore influences (even anarcho-punk) and forgetting about the "I wanna play a lot of guitar" syndrome in order to deliver a balanced, diverse and super enjoyable hardcore punk EP which has already reached the very top of this beginning of the year releases.

Good job!

 

 

 

 

  You can listen to Black Button on Rien à Faire #19.

 

 

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