got around to the Viet Cong album. it's pretty okay. Death is stellar. the rest is fine, some songs with grooves that could be growers. I think it'll get better with further listens when the early raving hype isn't inescapable. Think normally I can block that out well enough, but this time dudes were calling this album shit like "from the future" or mind-blowing or like nothing they'd ever heard before or completely indescribable. When the truth is, it's very easily digested and described noisy rock/post-punk. and it's far too often bloodless and indistinct. it'd be cool if anyone who think this is novel would check out records from this year like Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right, which is just as fierce but more immediate, Have a Nice Life's lp, which actually is adventurous and unique and vulnerable, Total Conrol - Typical System, which is more synth-y but still gnarly and loud and dancable, Whatever Brains' double EP which is far more sinister and abrasive. hell, also Whatever Brains' LPs from the three previous years. And HANL's first record. And if we're going back might as well go as far as like The Pop Group's For How Much Longer or This Heat's Deceit or the same band's
"Health and Efficiency" (as an aside why don't more records especially in "punk" and "post-punk" nowadays make any attempts at all to be political? like if VC had a political viewpoint that would at least set them apart.)
I dunno. every time I found a piece in this record that I kinda liked, I just found my mind drifting to a post-punk band that's done that particular piece better while also being better overall. I'll come back to it and see if it starts to distinguish itself
