Punk rock was always meant to challenge its listeners. Musically, the genre is known for being brash and angry; throaty and angst-ridden yelps ride the cathartic crashing of music that’s going on behind them to create something gross and combative. It’s not supposed to be easy to digest or something that you can immediately fall in love with, and it seems that the Philly-punks in Trash Boy are some of the last that truly understand that. Their debut album, The Future Is Trash, is out November 10th, and everything from the sonic attitude of these ten songs to the sloppy and provocative album art have taken everything that we’ve come to expect from punk and cranked it up to ten.
The record comes to an open with the crooning delivery of the lyric “my father and his father and his father and his father/all live in New York” before taking us into the rest of the blistering nature of “Fuck New York.” It’s a fast-paced and unapologetic tear down of the state and the singers paternal relationship that centers around a throaty and repetitive “fuck New York.” There’s enough melody baked into the angst that you’ll be walking around whistling the tune, if not full on singing it for hours after hearing it just the once. This same level of roaring intensity carries you through the record, only to be highlighted by songs like “Lizard People” and “Too Much Tongue.”
Closing track, Why Would I Want To Be In Love, is the kind of thrashy and funky punk-rock song that insights this deep-seeded desire to re-live the Bam Margera loving part of yourself that you’ve long forgotten and just break shit. There’s some doo-wop melodies buried in the track, a never-ending need to move, and shredding vocals that challenge the idea of romance by screaming “Why would I want to be in love!?” with enough gusto that you begin to ask yourself the very question.
When talking about their sound, Trash Boy have said: “We want our sound to be an unapologetic attack on political pandering, backwards belief systems, and living with apathy in the face of it all. The world might be fucked, but corporate greed and plunder for personal gain are no new vice. The answer to the never-ending existential crisis? Embrace the trash of this world. Live for the trash. Become the trash. The trash life is not about screaming into the void – instead, it means climbing to the top of the dirtiest landfill you can find, and throwing a dance party on the disposable remnants of our capitalist hellscape. It means protesting arbitrary oppressive societal expectations and making your own values. It means finding liberation outside of technology and the cobwebbed halls of academia. Best enjoyed in a communal mosh, headbang, crowdsurf, or stage crash with friends who give a fuck about each other.”
There’s no question that with The Future Is Trash, it’s mission accomplished for Trash Boy. You can stream the record in full below.
The Future Is Trash is out November 10th. Pick up your copy of the record here.
