DIY’s favorite thrash band ain’t a thrash band no more. Chicago’s Oozing Wound have been pigeonholed for the better part of the past decade, and well… it didn’t always fit then, but it certainly doesn’t fit on their latest album, We Cater To Cowards. Out now via Thrill Jockey Records (Big|Brave, Sightless Pit, Lightning Bolt), the tempos have curdled but the attack remains as blistering as ever. While the lead single, “The Good Times (I Don’t Miss ‘Em),” is built on buzzing riffs and lumbering rhythms, the trio setting their sights between the harsh scrappy side of Nirvana and the scummier end of the AmRep catalog. Much like their timeless influences, Oozing Wound manage to find accessibility within the rotting tension, pulling out hooks that aren’t necessarily catchy, but still serving a purpose of something to latch onto while simultaneously swinging with reckless abandon.
It’s probably the first Oozing Wound album that you could confidently describe as “noise rock,” and we’re fairly certain it’ll be among the genre’s best this year (a bold statement made in January). Genre lines are shaky at best (consider it a broad frame of reference), but throughout We Cater To Cowards, the trio really work to resurrect the sound of In Utero’s corpse re-thought, re-spawned, and built into their own Frankenstein’s monster of unrelenting aggression, snide humor, and the undefinable weight of massive low-end. The album swings between poles of density and dynamic bludgeoning, and the results feel genuinely explosive. We’re all left standing in the smoldering wreckage of an album that’s both well written and executed, but also sounds phenomenal (shout out to engineer Gregoire Yeche and Bonati Mastering). The bass and drums hit so hard it feels like the band are violently shaking us from complacency and hammering in much needed common sense like nails to the skull. There’s a sense of ruptured earth, a disturbance that can’t be ignored, with a plodding immediacy and general lack of melodic attention, this one is swarming tension, festering in the shadows after a relentless decimation.