Can you believe it's been thirteen years of Exploding In Sound Records? Neither can we. Join us in a celebration of the label. From now until Friday (October 25th), if you order a record from either our Bandcamp page or our webstore, we'll send you another record (of our choice) for FREE!!* We're sending some truly incredible records, we guarantee it. That's two records for the price of one. Same deal for tapes and CDs. It's a great way to celebrate the catalog and discover something (potentially) new to you. Classic, hidden gems, truly wonderful music.
We also made an enormous playlist over at Spotify with one track from nearly every release we've been involved with. Feeling inspired? Listen to the entire thing. It's a fun listen. I'm still working my way through it, but enjoying it very much.
Thank you to everyone that has helped support EIS over the years. Thank you especially to those who continue to support EIS and everyone that approaches the label with an open mind and an enthusiasm for what we're doing. MOST IMPORTANTLY, thank you to every band and artist that has ever worked together with EIS. A label is only as good as the bands on it and we're so lucky to work with so many of our all time favorite bands.
* in the US only, due to outrageous shipping costs.
Tennessee hardcore powerhouse, Thirdface, recently announced their sophomore album, Ministerial Cafeteria, due out November 1st via Exploding In Sound Records. Today the band are back with its second single, the pummeling and ambitious "Midian."
Thirdface blend mind-bending technicality with sheer ferocity into a one-of-a-kind take on hardcore that's as visceral as it is impressive. On Ministerial Cafeteria they dial their sound even further into the red, drawing on elements of punk, grindcore, and noise rock into one of the most inventive aggressive albums of the year. "Midian" follows lead single "Meander" (which garnered attention from the likes of Pitchfork, Stereogum, BrooklynVegan, Treble, and more) and flies through more wild riffs in 82 seconds than most bands do in an entire album.
Vocalist Kathryn Edwards discussed the new song saying:
"Our name references a side of yourself that you keep hidden. Sometimes that side is dark, maybe a touch nihilistic. I love Clive Barker’s Nightbreed and it’s exploration of how one’s fear of the hidden sides of themselves could physically manifest and evolve/mutate is heavily influential on the narrative imagery of this song."
Guitarist David Reichley added:
"Shibby and I wrote that at his grandma's house, where he used to live and built a studio, in the fall of 2019. It and 'Bankroll' were the first two songs of the album written and I was listening to a lot of Morrissey and early Refused at the time."
Ministerial Cafeteria follows Thirdface's acclaimed 2021 full-length, Do It With A Smile, and finds the band tighter than ever. Recorded and mixed by drummer Shibby Poole, the record packs a perfect balance of rawness and clarity that hits like a punch to the nose (in the best way). It's an album that sounds like it could only be performed by a hive mind operating on pure instinct, a blistering amalgamation of pummeling drums and intricate guitars that rarely lets up.
Throughout the album Edwards expertly weaves together personal and societal strife, connecting the dots between our inner lives and the outside forces that can impact them. Ministerial Cafeteria explores “horrors, real and imagined,” whose complexities match those of the music. Edwards explains, “The lyrics kind of represent a bit of a shift from primal anger at any and all external aggressors found in the first album, to what I think are the two central themes of this album: an introspective exploration of mental health issues and skepticism towards societal structures and authoritative powers.”
Thirdface also have a run of shows lined up in November supporting Chat Pile.
Nashville hardcore band Thirdface turned a lot of our heads (including ours) with their great 2021 debut LP Do It With A Smile, and we’re excited to learn that they’ll be putting out a followup this fall. Titled Ministerial Cafeteria, the album was recorded and mixed by drummer Shibby Poole and it comes out November 1 via Exploding In Sound (pre-order). Vocalist Kathryn Edwards says, “The lyrics kind of represent a bit of a shift from primal anger at any and all external aggressors found in the first album, to what I think are the two central themes of this album: an introspective exploration of mental health issues and skepticism towards societal structures and authoritative powers.”
The first single is “Meander,” a rager that squeezes sludgy, noisy post-hardcore, high-speed D-beat, hints of grindcore, and more into a two-minute runtime. It’s already got my hopes very high for this LP, and you can hear it below.
Did you know that that song from those Hershey’s commercials about stopping the world and melting with you is actually about nuclear holocaust? It’s hard to conceive of now, but evidently the Cold War had become so normalized by 1982 that we were getting chart-topping, upbeat new wave singles casually romanticizing the long-feared climax of The Day After and Fail Safe and Miracle Mile and Threads and countless other beyond-bleak depictions of what seemingly felt inevitable throughout a large chunk of the 20th century.
Anyway, this is all to say that Brooklyn-via-Boston’s Kal Marks are harnessing Modern English’s sense of optimism all these near-realized global disasters later with their latest LP, Wasteland Baby. On the record’s newly released title track, this culminates in what almost feels like a return to the ’60s girl-group era of pop songwriting under its tough, grungy exterior as Carl Shane spins a love song to his wife out of the wreckage of COVID, late-capitalism, any number of global conflicts our country may or may not be lubricating, and the increased pace of climate change that’s resulted from them. “‘Wasteland Baby’ is an apocalyptic love song, and really it’s an ode to my wife—she and our family make this often-miserable world worth living in, and I’m so lucky to have that,” Shane shares of the track, noting that the lyrics take cues from the morose wit of The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt. “This is my favorite Kal Marks song and it’s definitely the most proud I’ve ever been about a set of lyrics.”
The track’s video, directed by Austin Morris, dramatically animates Shane’s lyrics with imagery familiar to Blade Runner, Mad Max, and really any sci-fi-horror genre film that revolves around its deeply unsettling humanoid ETs. “‘Wasteland Baby’ is already a visual song, so the imagery came naturally,” notes Morris. “The song’s pacing felt like a heist film with a firework finale, a last desperate attempt in a dead world. To me, this is a very sincere song—it’s talking about love and it’s talking about it honestly. I wanted to make sure the video was as simple as that. I used 3D models in Blender to create the video, as the program is great for sci-fi world-building and the ability to achieve that creative scale. This was my first attempt at this method of animation.”
Check out the animated clip below, and pre-order Wasteland Baby here.
Last month, Kal Marks announced their new album Wasteland Baby and released the lead single “Insects.” The noise-rock crew is back today with an anxious tune titled “A Functional Earth.”
“‘A Functional Earth’ really helped cement the new album into a more colorful groovy direction,” vocalist and guitarist Carl Shane said. “We listened to Pet Sounds after a long writing session day. I’ve heard the album thousands of times, but the intro of ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ bounced around in my head in a much darker distorted way than normal. Instead of writing a trippy song about flowers and sunshine we wrote a trippy song about the end of the world. Sometimes it feels like the end is right around the corner and in truth for some people it is very true. Some are watching their families die. Humanity invented its own damnation with its unending thirst for power. We can’t stop drilling holes into the ground, releasing toxins into the air and water, or raining bombs on innocent people. The planet is pretty awesome on its own, just some people can’t stop and smell the fucking roses. I’m not saying anything new.”
Watch the video for “A Functional Earth” below, shot and edited by Pat Ronayne with lighting and special effects from Kieran McShane.
