Soft Torture is a new punk quartet from Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, made up of Chuck, Jess, Sam and
Aaron. Chuck (bass) played in
YDI
(pronounce Why Die if you're cool), an early 80s
hardcore punk act from Philly, Sam (guitar) plays in
DeStructos, Aaron (drums) plays in
Haldol
and
Blank Spell, has played in
The Stasi
and even in
Bad American at one point, a killer hardcore punk band mentioned before in my post
about Wipes. Aaron also manages
World Gone Mad Records
which has released some of his bands' records,
Soft Torture being no exception.
Ok that's way enough for an introduction, turn up the volume
and listen!
Fast and loud indeed! With no track exceeding two minutes, there's no time to waste, they play a super tight kind of fast-punk/hardcore punk with frantic rhythms and guitar riffs supporting mad and hallucinated female vocals. These eight songs (I don't count the outro as a real song) got that weird twist that would make some add the adjective "arty" to my previous and, I'm sure you'd agree, most accurate description ("arty" tends to be used a bit too often to describe anything slightly different from your next-door drunk pogo punk band so I'll refrain from sticking it on Soft Torture's music today, if you don't mind), let's just say that these guys are pretty skilled at making their songs sound both super fast AND super weird, a difficult outcome to achieve that requires a certain amount of musical "mastery" (the guitarist's killing it!).
The vocals also has a lot to do with the strong sense of "madness" and frenzy that immediately made me think of the awesome Judy And The Jerks, of their English counterpart of Sniffany And The Nits and, to a lesser extent, of Thing and Crotch Rot.
The record concludes with a 2:30 long outro which pops up like a pin-up from a cake at your grandma's birthday party: a bit unexpected you know... (well I don't know your grandma but I figure...). A slow and melancholic instrumental ballad more reminiscent of some Doors B-side than of Black Flag but I like it, isn't the world slowly sinking towards its own extinction anyway?
Soft Torture falls into a well-known category of super tight and super fast "weird" punk with female front vocals that's been extensively explored over the past decades but that I always enjoy (I'm a sucker for this shit), especially when it's played as well as Soft Torture do. A very good release!
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| picture by Angg Muñnzy |
N,J'Oi!
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