Album Reviews
Guess what? Gamits guitarist Chris Fogal is back with a new band that seemingly came out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere. Straight out of the Black In Bluhm studio in Denver, CO, which is owned and operated by Fogal and Dan Fox, who is also in the band along with Ian O'Dougherty. If you think that sounds like three friends deciding to pick up their instruments and write music together in order to escape from the shitshow that was 2020, then you are really good at this game. Because that’s exactly what Discomfort Creature is about. Well, that and cranking out some solid punk rock tunes.
The band’s self-titled EP comes with seven songs of the short, fast and urgent variety. Opener ‘Small’ wastes absolutely no time in getting to the point and manages to somehow pack everything you could ask for in a song in just over two minutes, including but not limited to powerful drumming, solid riffs, strong melodies and even some dissonance, hardcore intensity and oozing backup aah’s. If Fat Mike wrote this song, he would probably go on about how the song doesn’t even have a chorus. Discomfort Creature simply shift gears and burn through ‘Discomfort Creature’ and ‘Slumlord’, the latter of which somehow sounds like The Living End if they ramped up the intensity. Elsewhere, they let ‘Droplets’ veer between hardcore tendencies and something more ambient or lethargic, which kinda makes it the perfect summary of how I felt throughout all of 2020.
The end result? An EP’s worth of punk rock that sounds spontaneous but not rushed, and which should sit well with fans of Fogal’s previous work.
Track listing:
- Small
- Discomfort Creature
- Solid State POS
- Slumlord
- Droplets
- Fast Otis
- Bleed It Til It Dies
Lacking the talent to actually play in a band, Tom decided he would write about bands instead. Turns out his writing skills are mediocre at best as well.
