by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
For the past decade, Toronto’s Ryan Naray has played in one criminally underrated band after another. From his tenure in Animal Faces to his current projects, Fond and Chris, each of projects are the type that require vast digging to find, but once you do, you know you’ve found something special. This week Naray will release his debut solo album as Boiling Hell, a self-recorded full length of lo-fi post-hardcore and fuzz punk burners that really digs into what we’ve come to know and love from his songs. Fluff, due out on Art of the Uncarved Block (Triples, PAX, Tang), is a fun record built on great chord progressions and underlying sweetness.
With Naray’s voice often buried in the mix, his vocal melodies pop out at key times, emphasizing structure over pop values. Songs like “Backseat Noise” work a rock ‘n’ roll twang into bluesy noise, whirring with mumbled vocals that surge just as everything begins to feel lost in the haze. “Hot Plate” is immediate ripper, opening with a boisterous and insistent riff, tending to swallow the mix whole, as the drums and vocals feel texture, but texture you can really latch onto. The record is built with some great front-porch fuzz (“Bluffs”), acoustic interludes (“Through The Jet Stream”), and experimental atmospherics (“…In Winter”), but it’s songs like “Sad Eyes” that really drive in the essence of Boiling Hell’s low key greatness, a record that shares a similar spirit to Pile’s First Other Tape.