Album Reviews

Somehow 2022’s ‘Hygiene’ catapulted Drug Church from cult favorites to one of the most exciting up-and-coming bands in aggressive music. It earned them praise from the likes of Pitchfork, NPR, The FADER, and Rolling Stone and landed on a whole bunch of year-end lists. Which is weird when you consider that the album wasn’t all that different from what the band has been doing ever since releasing ‘Paul Walker’ back in 2013. Except maybe that vocalist Patrick Kindlon is starting to sound more like Fucked Up’s Damian Abraham with every new album.

Recorded and produced by longtime collaborator Jon Markson, Drug Church is back with ‘Prude,’ the band’s fifth album. Not bad for something that originally started as a side-project to Kindlon’s other band, Self Defense Family. ‘Prude’ comes with ten new cuts full of bulldozer riffs, melodies that are poppier than what you expect to hear on a hardcore album and of course, Kindlon’s lyrics which read like short stories. Take ‘Business Ethics,’ which is about someone who fakes his own kidnapping in order to make money so he can buy drugs. But Kindlon will just as well envy the simplicity of a dog’s life on previously released single ‘Demolition Man’ before telling someone to eat shit and choke on ‘Bitters’.

That’s pretty much the thing with Drug Church: you never really know what’s coming next, but you know it’s going to be worth listening to. Glad to see the rest of the world is finally catching on. They deserve all the praise they are getting.

PRUDE track listing:

1. Mad Care
2. Myopic
3. Hey Listen
4. Demolition Man
5. Business Ethics
6. Slide 2 Me
7. Chow
8. The Bitters
9. Yankee Trails
10. Peer Review