There’s something to be said for catching an old-fashioned passionate ass-whooping from a hardcore band. You know the type: for a minute at a time, four very, very angry people assail you with a flurry of flailing, inexact blows, where their intensity and energy is very apparent and the skill is maybe not. The Armed will not say those things on Untitled*.*
This technically dazzling and sniper-precise Detroit collective can be called a "hardcore supergroup," as that’s what usually happens when a band comes with prior affiliations—in this case, the Armed lists Slicer Dicer, Sumac, and Baptists on their C.V. And despite having a finely honed visual and musical aesthetic, the Armed named their new LP Untitled and simply identify as a "punk rock band"—in particular, the latter gives the connotation of them being noncommittal or lacking chops. But they’re doing so out of practicality: the Armed draw from extreme variations, but "punk" is always the common center. They’re "math rock" if you consider the Dillinger Escape Plan or Botch to be so as well, wherein the math is more along the lines of solving advanced calculus at gunpoint. While there’s more shifty rhythmic unpredictability on Untitled than a footwork album, the band always hits you square in the sternum, promising immediate, legitimate threat. As you might guess from the cover, there’s a grim sense of everyman humor heard on a Pissed Jeans or KEN mode record. Perhaps it’s not "melodic hardcore," as the choruses are identified not by melody, but howls being molded into catchier rhythms, such as the communal call-and-response of "Blessings" or the anthemic yearning of "Forever Scum", which get a little too close to Touché Amoré’s "Anyone / Anything".
Start playing with all of those comparisons and you’re liable to bring Converge into the conversation—and, not surprisingly, Untitled was recorded by Kurt Ballou. The production on Untitled is immaculate, however, "production" for this sort of music can often just come down to placing the microphones in the right spot and allowing the band to be heard as one would expect in its element. Ballou doesn’t disappoint, and he serves his purpose by ensuring this isn’t a slick record. This is how even the most adept hardcore bands can sound in dank basements, converted churches, and other makeshift venues—the guitars carom off and up concrete walls, the reverb is stony and unobtrusive. There isn’t a second of silence throughout Untitled: any time the guitars relent, a shriek of feedback goads them back into action. Whenever Nick Yacyshyn’s double kick drum gets activated, the speakers judder and cut out nearly every other sound, triggering a legitimate fear that an entire room is about to collapse on itself. "Dead Actress" is placed right at the center as a breather for four minutes, recalling the dubbier moments of Deftones or shoegaze sucking on exhaust or gunsmoke.
The unrelenting, grim sound of Untitled pairs with the Armed’s outlook, best summed up by another one of Ballou’s charges: modern life is war. Specifically, the cold, passive-aggressive battles that play out in online forums, in any local scene or really any place where social hierarchies are formulated on some unknown calculation of credibility and coolness. This being a supremely heavy punk record and all, you can likely guess what the Armed have to say about it: nothing is original; social media is compensation for a spiritual void; no one is to be trusted, not even the Armed. The omnidirectional rage is concentrated into nearly constant, blunt physical force, so a look at the lyrics sheet is liable to confirm what you’d assume. Even if you can’t hear it, there’s nothing you haven’t heard before: "Genuine sentiment/ Is not in today’s fashion," "Copy, paste, and like/ I curate my life," "They built a house of lies on this hill/ Reigning on down from high, a soulless shill."
Hardcore punk bands shouldn’t be required or expected to give a solution to their litany of societal problems, and it’s unclear at whom the Armed are pointing the finger on "Ender"—"Knee jerk/ Purest reaction of all...release/ The purest intention of all." Untitled provides a powerful utility if the mood is right: a soundtrack to times where the seemingly contradictory feelings of rage and exhaustion exist in equilibrium, and the only reaction is to just strike. This is a burdensome mood to maintain for even 15 minutes at a time. Experienced in small, invigorating bursts, Untitled can be galvanizing. But spend too much time in this claustrophobic environment and the Armed’s venting becomes toxic and suffocating.
