Author Archives: ChiefDoomsday

I’ll let BLXPLTN tell you about ZZEERRO (Dying for You to Get Rich) :

‘Punk has always been a warning about how much worse things could get, and now?  We’re there – and Austin‘s BLXPLTN are weaponizing their visceral, needle-burying proto-rock bursts to deliver the huge, nasty truth that the unthinkable is the new normal.  They’ve soaked in the history and sonics of their chosen genre, echoing the political and musical bent of the likes of Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains, and Fear.  But as acolytes of genre-benders like Ministry and Big Black, the need to kill convention poisons the blood of TaSzlin Rico Muerte and Jeremy Wolfe Kivett.  In place of duct-taped guitars and banged-up kits, the two push drum machines and synths to within inches of their lives.  ZZEERRO (Dying for You to Get Rich) is the latest case of what Fader calls “working-stiff punk… that makes me feel like punching someone in the face.”
There’s a live-wire immediacy to BLXPLTN because they tend to assemble these Molotov cocktails the second they get their hands on some gasoline.  One morning, TaSzlin woke up and saw something terrible on the news.  What was it?  Take your pick of all the horrifying things we now choke down on the regular.  He went into the studio and wrote this, the PhlegmTV LP’s first single.  The two kick out an unforgiving feedback squall, a primal beating with megaphone vocals chanting anti-mantras, as if from a Unabomber shack behind a burned-out factory.  But when the chorus hits, they manage to gouge out some serious melody amidst the chaos.  When the nearly unfazeable Noisey tells you, “BLXPLTN are going to burn down the stage, the crowd, and your house,” pay attention: this tune is what they’re talking about.  If you’re not already banging your head, a track like this will gladly bang it for you.’

-chief