Asbury Park punk quartet, Hot Blood, are back. With a vengeance. In the time since the band released Overcome Part 2 in 2016, let's just say a lot has happened in the political landscape of the USA and the world. In many ways, we've never been more divided as a people. There's a sense that we're all being gaslighted on a daily basis as we wonder if what we're watching can really be happening.
Over the course of 17 (18) songs in a fiery 30 or so minutes, Hot Blood touch on all of it -- from the sensitive nature of international relations to Donald Trump to the opioid crisis to mass shootings to climate change. And there are also moments when the band narrow their view to the personal and to the connections among individuals. In that way, like all of their past work, Hot Blood's anger and rage at the state of things are tempered by a sense of hope that, through work, we can effect change.
The album opens with early single "Nuclear Summer." Propulsive drums, buzzsaw guitars, and Kiley ruining his vocal chords as he screams about our obliviousness to the threat of impending doom. A product of Catholic school and a citizen of the most religious country in the industrialized world, Kiley looks for "an education" on how to reconcile the world's misery and division with religious beliefs on "Searching for God." Humans are messy and weird, but it's our differences and imperfections that unite us on "Flaw." "...it becomes so clear that we're all the same and at the end of the game the pawn and the king sleep in the same box."
"On the Roof," when it's just a bunch of workers together on a job, "there's no backwards politics." The band offer some unsolicited advice to the president on "Donald." The surfy "Horse" only takes a minute to get to the tragedy of our country's opioid crisis: "Could've been anyone."
The title track comes at, roughly, the album's mid-point. The chorus lends itself well to fist-pumping, sweaty screamalongs during which participants can forget their differences and chant as one. The band address the toxicity of the politics of division later on "Naptime for Democracy."
Hot Blood take on other high profile issues like mass shootings on "Duck and Cover" ("Is this really who we fucking are?"), rampant consumerism on "Logoland" ("They're always there!"), and climate change denial on "Rising Tide" ("Til hell or high water but they're both showing up."); but they also focus on the personal and the little, human things that unite us -- "My Heart's Still Beating."
Those who purchase the LP version of Fear of a Unified Public also get secret (acoustic!) track "Joke." On it, Kiley gives his deeply personal take on losing friends and feeling like he's losing his mind as he watches the crumbling of our civil society.
With the exception of "Joke," Fear of a Unified Public is relentless, hardcore punk. Kiley, guitarist Alex Rosen, drummer Billy Straniero, and bassist Charlie Schafer don't let up even for a minute as they take us through their view of American society. Anyone who's been even a semi-regular visitor to this blog can probably tell that hardcore punk isn't necessarily in my wheelhouse, but I've always been able to get behind Hot Blood. I can hear the musicality coming up through the barrage, and the lyrics are always intelligent and spiked with humorous turns of phrase. And while Hot Blood don't go easy on anyone in their crosshairs, they always offer up a sense of hope.
The album closes with a quote from Noam Chomsky that, I think, sums things up pretty well:
"You have two choices, you can say, "I'm a pessimist, nothing's going to work, I'm giving up, I'll help ensure the worst can happen." Or, you can grasp onto the opportunities that do exist, the rays of hope that exist and say, "Well, maybe we can make it a better world". It's not much of a choice."
Fear of a Unified Public is out now on Gruesome Twosome Records.
Brilliantly written. Word to word this article describes the band to the tee! You nailed it on this one!
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