“We’re all doing life abuse, Manny” said my colleague. And it’s true. Life has fucked us all up this way and that way. Some of us have had financial abuse. Some have had physical abuse. Some of us have had emotional abuse. And most of us have certainly abused ourselves. At least in the context of treating this temple we call a body like a solar powered trash compactor left on the docks of sunny Baltimore, Maryland.
“Failure by Design,” the eighth track on Systematization, is not a reflexive title. This album neither fails nor follows any design. Rather, the album is an homage to the European crust scene of old. Highlighted marvelously by this track it opens in an uproarious fury akin to any of the names you’d want to throw out (e.g. Hellstorm, Rotbrains, Doom, Skitsystem, etc.). Yet this isn’t just a pedal-to-the-metal crusty experience. Life Abuse sprinkles in ample breakdowns as the drums roll and the guitars cascade downward in a staccato fashion. Finally, the track throws in a repetitive outro full of rumbling bass drums and squawky leadlines.
If crust punk had supergroups this would certainly be one. But the idea of groups and things being ‘super’ is clearly not a very punk idea. So instead the band is just a fucking band that plays in your face punk rock in an atmosphere soiled by body odor, stick and poke tattoos, and free warm beers. If house shows still occur and VFW’s, Elks Lodges, and community centers still host punk rock shows then this is a band that would be chosen to headline one.
It would be depressing to close this review without discussing the lead lines. “Give Rise” features a ripping lead line as the song closes; a lead line that might be more at home on a hair metal record. Yet here it is effortlessly woven into the murky abyss of the failures of life and the tinny drone of d-beat crust punk. And it’s a much welcomed addition to the formula. All too frequently bands in the punks and punk-adjacent genres go without notice of their talent and it should be noted that it isn’t fucking easy to play this shit. It’s about as difficult as it is to get through this thing we attempt to call life.
So yes. We will meet you on the docks in Baltimore. And we will all throw out our fishing magnets into the plagued river in search of ancient plumbing that might have a wee bit of copper under that rust. And we can trade the copper for drugs and used needles and glass shards to digest between our lung lining and our ribs. It’s the burning sensation that makes us feel alive. Or the camaraderie. Either way, we’ll all be together doing life abuse. Join us!