Vermin

Kingdom of Birds make kinetic, grungy post-punk that's equal parts abrasive, confessional, and melodic. Since playing Exclaim!'s Class of 2025 showcase last year, the band — made up of Asa Berezny (guitar/vocals), Annabel Barbon-Mcguire (bass) and Beatrice Richard (drums) — have continued to hone their razor-sharp live shows while recording their first proper album, Vermin. Eight crackling tracks filled with personality, desire, exhaustion and vitriol, it's a short, taut and powerful statement from one of Toronto's best bands.With Berezny — who founded the outfit back in the 2010s — at the helm, Kingdom of Birds write songs that remind you of the future while echoing the past. Sometimes it's uncomfortable, sometimes it's devastating, and sometimes it's beautiful, but it always fucking rocks. Lead single "Kenny" is fuzzy and driving, a moss-covered boulder rolling with the crunchiest riff this side of '95. It pounds and bounds yet remains unmistakably groovy, the rhythm section setting a lockstep over which Berezny can howl — and it's all over in less than two minutes.On the album's jittery, propulsive centrepiece "Quake," Berezny's Patti Smith-by-way-of-Kim Gordon vocals are at their most powerful and accusatory, yet shadowed with dark humour. The bass-only sections of the second verse reflect the feelings of hollow need, when we drop all pretence. The guitar and drums pounce in to accent the most important statements like sonic billboards, before Berezny's repetition of "On… on… on… on…" in the bridge and outro turns the song into something apocalyptic; a downward spiral into need."Cherry Picker" is the best song the Slits never wrote, with its dubby verses — courtesy of Barbon-Mcguire's slithering bass line and Richard's tight, rolling drumming — and yelled chorus ("I'm gonna make you cry!"), while the amount of cowbell would make Christopher Walken proud. The acoustic-helmed "Rats" evokes Toronto in the fall, a drizzled walk along College Street, Our Lady Peace holding hands with Elliott Smith, the fluttering vocal before the chorus crackling with anticipation.Throughout Vermin, there's a tension between the feeling of desire and its outward expression. Not repressed so much as purposely withheld, it's a testament to the group's writing skills: sometimes, the music betrays the wants and needs expressed in the lyrics; sometimes, it's vice versa. Most importantly, none of it overstays its welcome — unlike some of the nice guys Berezny has to scream at near the end of "Nice Guys."The last song on the album, "I Want You," has a sliding, skeletal guitar line and a crystalline melody that reverberates and reflects while voices collapse and rise, colliding and melding before collapsing again. When the distorted guitar comes in, you'll remember those moments of unrequited love; of summers drunk in parks, head thrown back, spinning toward the sky; of messages and burdens and finality. All that yearning and feeling, all that drama, it'll burst forth from your memory like a blooming roman candle, overwhelming and unexpected. It will make you cry, and it also just might be the best thing the band have ever done.Intimate and riotous, Vermin — from its title to its lyricism to its music — positions us as rats grasping at the elixir of intimacy that dribbles ever so incoherently from the bottle affixed to the cage. The album is a gestalt of sounds and emotions, fluctuations of feeling that ebb and flow like a pendulum, undulating between elation and sombreness, cruel reality and fantastical escapism. It's one of the most immediate records of 2026 yet, and your friends will be pontificating about Kingdom of Birds before you know it. (Bird bands are having a moment, haven't you heard?)