by Travis Shosa (@counterzine)
Since 2003, John Dwyer's malleable Californian outfit Osees has cranked out, at minimum, one studio album every year, with the sole exception of 2021. You would forgive the man for taking a year off after the four krautrock records he released with Osees in 2020 alongside his solo album Bug on Yonkers under the Damaged Bug moniker. That is until you realize he was busy with another four collaborative jazz fusion albums and one of the best live albums of the year in Levitation Sessions II.
John Dwyer is a machine whose music does not take gas out of his tank but fills it up. It is one thing to spit out similar releases at breakneck speed, but there is an entirely different level of brilliance required to seamlessly float from genre to genre at Dwyer's pace. Counting the earliest OCS iteration of the band and the Panther Rotate remixes, A Foul Form is Osees' twenty-sixth album and first foray into crust punk, a sound that unsurprisingly suits them as well as any other they have dabbled in.
After the more experimental endeavors of recent years, A Foul Form both carves out new ground for Dwyer and company to dig into while also calling back to the raucousness and comparative simplicity of Coachwhips and the Thee Oh Sees era. Not as ear-shatteringly loud as Bangers vs. Fuckers nor does it frenetically chug at the clip of classic tracks such as "The Dream," A Foul Form is taut and crackling. It burns white hot; the path it blazes is direct.
Dwyer's signature yelps and amorphous phrasings are swapped for clean growls and snarled shouts, leading A Foul Form to be one of the most lyrically intelligible releases from Osees. The added clarity and definition serve its overarching theme of violence, often of a political nature, well. "Perm Act" starts like an alarm clock cutting through a hangover migraine before pummeling drum fills trample out a road upon which to stealthily cruise. Dwyer adopts a vocal cadence similar to that of Jello Biafra as he likens the police forces to state-sponsored thuggery ("Eating in their car while / You're gasping in the dirt / Training proper thugs to / Give and take some hurt").
While his affinity for hung, siren-toned guitar has not been abandoned, Dwyer and Tom Dolas have lathered an additional coating of grease upon their axes this go-round. Riffs are filthy and raw. Feedback is buzzier, fuzzier, and scuzzier. Not ones for pretentiousness or to pretend their sound exists in a vacuum, Osees proudly gloat their inspirations: Rudimentary Peni (whose "Sacrifice" is covered as the album closer), Crass, Bad Brains, Black Flag, Screamers, Abwarts, and Stooges are all listed as influences on the album's Castle Face Records page. All of which are noted to be dark, confrontational, sleazy, or some combination thereof. Grim and grime define A Foul Form: a savage beatdown in a dirty alleyway outside a dive bar after the last call.
That is not to say A Foul Form is lacking in humor, morbid as it may be. "Funeral Solution" raises the question "Why die every night?" about sleep and suggests that "Peaceful living is too slow" concerning humanity's undeniable longing for the grave. The solution provided? To engage in wanton violence so that you and others may meet a sooner, more gruesome end. The jovial jaunt of "Fucking Kill Me" is yet another way in which Osees subvert the specter of expiry, mutating the gallop of the Horseman of Death into a gag to be mocked and ridiculed and thus shaking its cold psychological grip, punctuated with exaggerated gasps for air.
A record like A Foul Form seems almost humble when stacked against Dwyer's recent projects. It is a punk record made with the primary goal of paying homage to other punk bands. Yet it is carried by a constant and pure uncut catharsis that has been in some ways absent from Dwyer's more sprawling odysseys. There can be a bleak beauty in the basics. Expanding your mind is not for all of the time. For the days where nothing but a relentless series of shadowy, ooze-drenched throat punches will do, A Foul Form will do very well.