Rotting Cesspit Fear In Your Eyes

Squid “Houseplants”

I can’t claim to know all of the music that’s been coming out over the past few years, but I have screened a LOT of it and one thing I’ve noticed is that it’s very rare to hear anyone younger than 35 really scream these days. I have theories about this, but let’s not get into it. I’m just getting at how to hear a new band with a screaming, hugely expressive singer is a rarity now. It sounds extra unhinged.

Ollie Judge, the drummer and vocalist of Squid, sounds like a fucking maniac on this song. It’s not cookie-monster-vocal machismo or anything you’d typically get out of metal or grunge. It’s more bug-eyed and deranged, and the lyrics are so cryptic and odd that it’s all the more weird and jarring. It’s unsettling to hear a guy screaming “HOUSEPLANTS! HOUSEPLANTS!” like he’s having some sort of episode. The music is essentially punk but there’s bits of krautrock and jazzy skronk in the mix. Given that Judge has some vocal similarity to James Murphy, it comes out sounding like if all of LCD Soundsystem were dosed with bath salts.

This is fantastic and I want more of it.

Buy it from Bandcamp.