by Benji Heywood (@benjiheywood)
When was the last time you had fun listening to music? Or, maybe more telling, when was the last time the people making the music you were listening to sounded like they were having fun? If it’s been a while, the streak is about to come to end, assuming you pop on We Cater to Cowards, Oozing Wound’s latest noisy gem. It’s not hard to crank the volume on Cowards and think: these guys are having a fucking blast.
For the uninitiated, Oozing Wound are a heavy band born from the fertile stomping grounds of Chicago’s DIY warehouse scene and have a penchant for delivering albums chalk-full of songs too heavy to have made In Utero, spiked with the self-deprecating humor of a Second City castoff. Their new album, We Cater to Cowards, is something of a departure from previous releases, albeit not one as drastic as some of the discourse has made it out to be. While the tempos have been slowed down, I’d argue songs like “Tween Shitbag” from 2019’s High Anxiety or “Everything Sucks, and My Life Is a Lie” from 2016’s Whatever Forever would fit peachily on Cowards. If you take the ride Oozing Wound are offering, you’ll be rewarded. Cowards is a shot of adrenaline in the overly-morose landscape of today’s heavy music.
I’m not saying bands making heavy music have no cause to be upset. Just flip through today’s landscape of toxic train derailments, profiteering corporations blaming inflation on paying workers a living wage, and the scuttlebutt insanity of ratcheting tensions between nuclear powers over a science experience gone awry and congratulations, welcome to earth in the 21st century. History may be having a meltdown, but I for one would rather laugh as I burn. If We Cater to Cowards is any indication, the peeps in Oozing Wound – guitarist/vocalist Zack Weil, bassist Kevin Cribbin, and drummer Kyle Reynolds – agree. Cowards is forty minutes of hooky, bombastic, irreverent punk rock that makes me want to strip naked, snort Adderall, and blow up a pipeline.
Have I air-drummed this entire record? Guilty. Have I played it inappropriately at social gatherings like my niece’s third birthday party? You betcha. This album is such a glorious bummer, it makes summer feel like it arrived three months early – and with the spiraling climate crisis, it may not be just my imagination. The opening cluster bomb of “Bank Account Anxiety,” “Total Existence Failure,” and “The Good Times (I Don’t Miss ‘Em)” make good on the thought experiment of what if Jesus Lizard had an album before Head with a different singer. If this trio of shitkickers doesn’t pacify your heavy quotient, you may want to get your ears checked.
Speaking of, Cowards sounds as if it were recorded at an unreasonable volume – big ups to engineer Gregoire Yeche and Bonati Mastering for that – and when you listen, you can’t really seem to turn it down. And why would you want to? The punishing “Hynpic Jerk” and the joyful noise of “Between Cults” prove you don’t need to tune your guitar down to “toneless” to feel gut-punched. “Chudly” chugs and turns on a dime from head-bobber to staccato banger while “Midlife Crisis Actor” obliterates any misconception that Cowards isn’t a deeply devastating album. The refreshingly strange thing is that, through it all, this album got hooks, especially in the album’s opening third and in its pulverizing closer, “Face Without Eyes.”
Maybe some hear this and think Oozing Wound have somehow sold out or mellowed or whatever some ill-informed punk (like me, unfortunately) would have said in 1996. Horns don’t belong on a metal record. Blah blah blah. But an honest assessment of We Cater to Cowards would never reach that conclusion. This is heavy music of the highest order. Flattening walls between sub-genres is their calling and thank TAD it is. As Zack Weil puts it in the album’s press materials, “We don’t care about propriety or the sanctity of TRVE METAL or any of that bullshit.” Amen. This much is evident: Oozing Wound don’t give a flying V and they’re having a great time proving it.