After two tinnitus-inducing years playing shows and practicing endlessly, Plasmalab sound like they know exactly what they’re doing on their debut LP. Songs like Vancab and Machine Mirror seem just as explosive and unruly on record as when the band rips into them in the back room of Faith / Void. They swap instrument and vocal duties with each other seamlessly, their voices remaining distinct and well-defined even as their roles within the band blur into one another, a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Every track here is a winner, but the album (and world)-ending Hole In The Ground & Twenty Grand deserves special mention. It starts out as a menacing chug, Jacqueline Lachance’s snarling vocals eventually giving way to a queasy extended guitar solo that dissolves into a forest of howling and squealing feedback. Then Morgan Dowler’s kick drum reappears, waves of wrecked guitar start to pile up, and Katie Hernandez drags us to hell, vocals dripping with acid one minute, screaming bloody murder the next. It’s easily one of the most epic performances of the year, exhausting but unrelenting, out-of-control but fully determined.
Eileen Myles once wrote that “puking would put something on the sidewalk of the everyday so it might begin to be now.” Love / Life is an act of violence against complacency, an urgent appeal to wring meaning out of life, a refutation of passivity so thorough it blows speakers, screams itself hoarse, self-immolates. This record cares about you and wants you to be your best self, has already gone ahead and told your boss to fuck off on your behalf. This record has gotten you wasted and is driving toward a cliff’s edge with total conviction. Engulfed in flames, all you can think about is how you want to start a band now. It will not be as good as Plasmalab, but that’s ok.
Top track: Hole In The Ground & Twenty Grand
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