this is not pitchfork

[NickMango from twitter asked for anything from Long Island that's punk/hardcore/screamo - so I'll start with this one]

This album is an acquired taste. But once you acquire a taste for it, you’ll never let it go, even when the primal screams, the spittled hatred, the vulgarities and obscenities, the passionate loss, the bitterness anger and rage that all co-exist on this album no longer mean anything to you, you will still cling to EYEWTKAS like a torn, ragged teddy bear that you don’t need anymore, but you keep it anyhow, because if life sucked this hard once, it just might suck again, and you never know when you’ll need to scream lyrics like “I just might fuck you enough to love you” into your pillow.

What this album has going for it that a lot of screamfests don’t is there are beautiful melodies and moments of such sorrowful disquiet throughout that all the abuse, unfaithfulness, disease and pain that what should leave you filled with a bitter adrenaline instead makes you just want to cry for every time any of those words meant anything to you. EYEWTKAS plays out as a well crafted, if sordid, documentary of love, pain, sickness and betrayal, a tale where there are no heroes and no one wins.

Once upon a time, this album and angry lyrics like “as long as your mouth is shut, you’ll still be fucking beautiful” could be a stinging reminder of the way things were, but now, it’s just pure hardcore enjoyment; it’s all about projection. Put this on in the car after a rough day at work and you’re not screaming at a girl or a guy, you’re not pissed at having your heart broken, you’re just primal screaming your way out of a bad mood.

Favorite song: Motel of the White Locust (don’t listen to this at work, ok? And stick around for the bittersweet, pretty bonus song at the end, with its lyrics that are the perfect ending to things gone wrong.)

Singer Daryl Palumbo is also the singer for the groovy Head Automatica (where he sings, not screams)