Austin, Texas punks Ghetto Ghouls have been making music together since they were 14, and after a decade they're finally putting out their debut LP. The band's received several comparisons to their hometown hardcore forebears—Dicks, Stick Men With Ray Guns, Scratch Acid, and so on. The sonic similarities are definitely there, and viewing grainy footage of frontman Corey Anderson's sweaty, shirtless, flailing performance style at Austin's Beerland venue confirms that this is intense shit.
Despite the callbacks to the past, the Ghouls do more than ride the coattails of SST and Touch and Go's back catalogs. Situated in the contemporary Austin rock landscape, their sound falls somewhere between the immediacy of OBN IIIs and the Flesh Lights and the oddball headiness of Spray Paint and Beth Israel. Many releases in this sphere focus on fuzz, volume, and speed to compensate for subpar songwriting, but Ghetto Ghouls' skills are a cut above, so don't get too distracted by their slovenly presentation or the press photo where Anderson's vomiting. They grab you out the gate with Dan LeVine's blistering guitars and Ian Rundell's pummeling drum onslaught, punishing eardrums with the introductory feedback of "My Hands" as those screeches eventually give way to another breakneck drive. Over and over again, they dish out the same indomitable belligerence they've mastered in a live setting.
Anderson's vocals are largely mush-mouthed and muffled, but when the words make it through, they're typically intense sentiments. "I feel brainwashed," he declares in a hoarse singsong on "SGO", later admitting on "Pigs" that he was "Shot in the head" before declaring that he's dead now. When he screams "Give me a gun," he sounds insistent, screaming with terrifying abandon. (The violent lyrical content makes thematic sense when considering that Ghetto Ghouls took their name from the blood-soaked 1980 vigilante revenge film The Exterminator.) In the midst of the band's indefatigable wallop, Anderson's voice is the perfect tool to help establish a song's tone. "Living Alone" opens gradually and quietly, but as the guitar and drums take their time, Anderson is screaming about his solitude, taking the song from "paced" to "desperate". LeVine's guitar also contributes in dictating the emotional hue of these songs; his noodling on "Atomic Bomb" adds a twitchy, frantic touch.
The best example of what Ghetto Ghouls are capable of is "Simple C", which at four minutes is twice the length of every other song on the album. The band's initial plan was to make it another loud and fast rager, but in slowing the track down, they find a mid-tempo stride befitting a song that's about hiding depression beneath a facade of happiness. The central bass line isn't especially complex, but it's sturdy enough to support the entire song—and when the guitars come in, they add power to that backbone without showboating. The resulting effect recalls Eddy Current Suppression Ring, another band that can rip with the best of them while also just as easily settling into a relaxed groove. Not every song on Ghetto Ghouls is a home run—the guitar scrape of "Roofshit" is grating when it overstays its welcome—but for the most part, Ghetto Ghouls have made an unstoppable, often chaotic vortex of exhilarating punk songs.
