by Charlie Pecorella (@oatbituary)
New Jersey hardcore band Gel is the state’s worst kept, best secret. A side project spawning from powerviolence group Sick Shit, Gel’s influence on the modern hardcore scene has far out sprawled the grime-sprayed basements their sound was cultured in. Members Sami Kaiser, Anthony Webster, Matthew Bobko, Maddie Nave, and Alex Salter have stunned the local scene with their global reach, although with their collective talent and seemingly in-exhaustive grind, one can hardly be surprised. Their freakish charm can summon half the Garden State in brand-blazing bootie shorts to a Sonic Drive-Thru parking lot, and constant touring corrals crowds that can only be imagined by their nearly 85K followers on Instagram alone.
Their third EP, Persona, is a fiery, fifteen minute round-trip to hell, heaven, and back to wherever you find yourself dumbfounded by their no-bullshit sensibilities. The visualizer for this five-track epic features a whipping palette of black, purple, and white, lashing at a blank human form whose scalp is smudged with the deep streaks that cushion the band’s name. Experiencing Gel, both visually and sonically, has always been an exercise in whiplash. Aesthetically, their image is wrought from ink that drips, slashes, and bubbles into a unique, identifiable brand. Their songs, though anything but formulaic, tend to open with chunky chords that are swept into fuzzed-out, non-committal melodies, doubling or breaking down over lead singer Sami’s (they/them) scowl. Listeners are dragged in and out of these break downs, and challenged to charge into the “vertigo, the constant hunger” that Gel lays out, simultaneously reminded, as the audience, to “remember [their] fucking place.”
Persona is a vulnerable release fortified by a brick-solid, impenetrable sound. Their first single and EP opener, “Mirage,” draws from the devil within, etching a sketch of violence, abuse, betrayal, and cruelty. The defiant track attests to power derived from acknowledging hurt and conjuring a living, breathing devil from memories. With song as ritual, Gel creates an opportunity for life in headspaces that were meant to be killed but remain undead by cruel magic. The track is a void where you can be both held and held back, where you can build what will just as swiftly crumble, where you can possess another’s words, but your own blood is on loan to the beast you created at the call of another. Whether the “you” targeted throughout the EP is an external enemy, self-derived demon, non-binary other, Gel assuredly remarks “Your face is blurred but I’m on the right track.”
“Shame” is an instant groove, a doom-driven callout whose monosyllabic title speaks to Gel’s core themes in songwriting. The EP’s final single and title-track, “Persona” is a scrammy, demanding number that guts the “gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone.” The fourth track, “Martyr” checks in before bringing it home with the heavy closer, “Vanity” – are you feeling it? Are you with them? The Persona EP dares freaks in their scene to be authentic, and risk losing it all in the process. Gel honors the violence that bust our egos, and the communities that stitch us back together. Through collective healing, “THE FREAKS WILL INHERIT THE EARTH.”