by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Connecticut's Bilge Rat aren't playing it safe on Pal, the band's sophomore album, due out this Friday, August 3rd via Bee Side Cassettes. The trio have been playing a swampy blend of post-hardcore and abrasive dirge pop for a few years, but on their latest album they are expanding their palette into wider sonic terrain, experimenting with unknown structures and wonky phrasing, leaving everything willfully unbalanced and impressively detached. Led by Mike Kusek (guitar/vocals) and the expert rhythm section of the always impeccable Quinn Pirie (drums) and recent addition Michael Hammond (bass), the band find new ways to contort their dynamic waves of dizzying bleakness.
"Cupio," the album's second single is on the more restrained side of their new experimental focus, instead opting for monolithic walls of distortion and ever off-kiltered rhythmic attacks that pound away under the most blistering of guitars. The song starts casual enough, a slowcore indebted introduction crawls forward, bursting with squalls of bleeding guitars, the song relying on it's various textures to color in otherwise grayed picture. They twist and scrape with cascading drum feels and enraged feedback roaring against one another, building into an ever chaotic whirlwind of controlled fury and paint peeling bliss.
Bilge Rat's Pal is out August 3rd via Bee Side Cassettes. Catch the band on tour with Spowder, all dates below.
Tour Dates:
08/02 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Catamaran *
08/03 - Richmond, VA @ My Noodle & Bar *
08/04 - Asheville, NC @ Fleetwoods On Haywood *
08/05 - Athens, GA @ The World Famous w/ Floral Print *
08/06 - Chattanooga, TN @ JJ’s *
08/07 - Nashville, TN @ Betty's Grill w/ Caroline Says *
08/08 - Knoxville, TN @ Birdhouse *
08/09 - Harrisonburg, VA @ Crayola House *
08/10 - Washington, DC *
08/11 - New Brunswick, NJ @ Paradise Lost *
08/17 - Middletown, CT @ MAC 650 Gallery w/ Nova One
* w/ Spowder