Quite an enigmatic new arrival in the realms of raw punk, noise rock and post hardcore, New Orleans band, Pricked, reveal their debut EP, Undo/Redo, on Ashtray Monument, and it's a pretty stormy one from start to finish.
Formed in 2018, Pricked offer a very coarse and organic punk rock sound whose main characteristic and strongest post is the immediacy it carries. Like an unprocessed take on The Stooges or a smuttier Destroy All Monsters, the band lays everything straight right off.
All of the EPs six songs are nasty punk rockers, abounding in energy and dirt. Centerpiece, Dead Air, temporarily can pass off as an attempt by the band to slightly clean out and structure their act a bit more tightly for a moment, but the track also turns out to be an exercise on extreme fuzz and distortion.
Right before, opener Stayed Awake has paved the way for the heated punk rock frankness which Pricked generally deal. For the rest of the tracks which follow, the band sound thoroughly frank on the lyrically acute City Folk, they verge on a kind of a chaotic purgation on the maddening Hysterical Blindness, and let themselves go even wilder on the improvisational jam Thirsty, right before the EP culminates in the speedy meltdown that is closing number, Top Drawer.
It seems like Pricked do not try especially harder to master the two/three-minute songwriting format, but they've done a great job communicating their ardor, with everything coming across as a totally instinctual creative endeavor.
"Clamored and visceral, this record is our catharsis," they say, and just like the music itself, that statement is quite believable.
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