For years, Angel Du$t was Justice Tripp’s balmy reprieve from Trapped Under Ice. When he fronted the Baltimore hardcore band, he cursed out ice queens and swore he’d “stay cold forevermore” to protect his heart. These tormented songs were molded by the trauma and violence that Tripp endured during his hardscrabble upbringing. Angel Du$t’s 2014 debut, A.D., with its pink cover art and perky pop-punk sound, showed that he was learning to leave the past behind and warm up a bit. On subsequent Angel Du$t records, the music got even softer, the imagery cozier, and Tripp’s lyrics, which once focused almost solely on heartbreak and regret, became intoxicated by the fumes of romance (“Deep Love,” “Big Ass Love,” “Love Slam”) and rock’n’roll (“Twist N Shout,” “In the Tape Deck”).
Alas, Tripp is once again feeling a true chill. On Angel Du$t’s sixth album, COLD 2 THE TOUCH, he revisits some of the darker subjects from his early work across a set of songs that are heavier, wearier, more pissed-off than 2023’s Brand New Soul. He begs for his “freezing” body to be held tight (“Jesus Head”), laments that his internal permafrost remains unmeltable (“Zero”), and pays a visit to “the place where dreams go to die” (“The Knife”) to exact revenge upon… someone. Himself? Tripp’s writing has become less brutally pointed as his music has become looser, settling into a form of vibey psych-rock that’s nearly unrecognizable from Angel Du$t’s Ramones-via-Bad Brains origins.
COLD 2 THE TOUCH isn’t a full return to the band’s lovably spartan beginnings, but it is the best balance of no-frills punk and experimentation that Angel Du$t have ever delivered. Although a good portion of this album still sounds like Kurt Vile going through a Sly Stone phase, the kumbaya squishiness of the past few records has hardened into a brisk antagonism. On the title track, a spiky invective aimed at soulless bands, Tripp sounds more fired up than he has since TUI’s last record in 2017. He’s spent the past decade chiseling his emotive hardcore rasp into a sultry power-pop croon, but he lets the old Tripp snarl through on “Pain Is a Must” and “The Beat,” the two gnarliest Angel Du$t songs since 2016’s Rock the Fuck on Forever.
Between those harder highlights and the rogue’s gallery of guest vocalists—members of Terror, American Nightmare, God’s Hate, and Restraining Order—COLD 2 THE TOUCH is Angel Du$t’s way of signaling their loyalty to hardcore proper. However, the album’s best songs are the hybrids. “Zero” fuses smokey Southern-rock riffing with chunky hardcore churn, while “DU$T” swings from acoustic balladry to throttling powerviolence and ends with Tripp teasing a mosh part that—surprise!—is actually a funk breakdown. The pseudo-gospel of “Man on Fire” is the one track that goes a little overboard, but the straightforward punk-pop bliss of “Nothing I Can’t Kill” provides a counterweight to Tripp’s acid-blotted impulses.
What makes Angel Du$t’s evolution fulfilling is that it’s never been an attempt to grow out of hardcore. They load their songs with acoustic twiddles and picnicky melodies while regularly playing hardcore festivals, touring with much heavier bands, and encouraging stage-dive mayhem at their shows, maintaining a firm foothold in a subculture that has little tolerance for “too cool” maturations. COLD 2 THE TOUCH honors Angel Du$t’s tradition of fast songs and feisty spirit, but it also affirms that they’ll never settle for retreading ground they’ve already stomped on.
