Review: Destroy Boys – Funeral Soundtrack #4

Destroy Boys
Funeral Soundtrack #4
Hopeless Records
Street: 08.09
Destroy Boys = Siouxsie and the Banshees x Misfits

Within the past year and a half, Destroy Boys has played both Coachella and Lollapalooza and toured with the likes of Blink-182 and Pierce the Veil, but the band has never strayed too far from their Bay Area roots, nor their strong political principles. In January, founding member Alexia Roditis played an impromptu concert outside Peoples Park in Berkeley, supporting protestors defending the park from occupation and demolition by UC Berkeley police. They’ve rejected the term “female-fronted band” and raged against the gendered boxes that people often put them in. I didn’t discover Destroy Boys until after I’d moved away from California, but listening to them is like being transported to the pit at 924 Gilman. 

On their fourth album Funeral Soundtrack #4, Destroy Boys is breaking patterns, growing out of relationships and shedding old skin without losing any of their biting sarcasm or chaotic ferocity. (The first line of the album is “I wanna spit in your face.”) In true punk fashion, half of the songs are under three minutes long, but the frenzied hardcore tracks are sandwiched between more stripped-back, shoegaze-y songs that gives the project some needed balance and breathing space. Leaning into elements of horror and nostalgia makes the themes of toxic, torturous love and complex relationships with gender even more gritty and powerful. 

“Bad Guy” opens with echoey, ascending chords that sound like Dracula pounding at an organ. Roditis’ deep, howling voice sounds like Siouxsie Sioux mixed with Hayley Williams, but “Amor Divino” proves they can tap into a more lighthearted, dreamy and hopeful tone while also singing in Spanish. Violet Mayugba, the band’s other guitarist and vocalist, is punchier than her counterpart, especially on short and brutal tracks like “Beg For The Torture” and “Should’ve Been Me.” Sirens drone and and fuzzy gibberish loops in the background as she screams about letting yourself be manipulated: “Push my head into the pillow and tell me that you’re proud.” 

For Destroy Boys, maturing means embracing sincerity and sarcasm in equal doses. The bubbly pop-rock sound of “Plucked,” complete with plucky synths and ooh-ooh-oohs, is a cheeky match for Roditis’ dry lyrics about the pressures of being a musician and feeling distanced from your former passion. Meanwhile, acoustic track “Shedding Skin” is a personal favorite—heartfelt and mournful, with a Latin-influenced rhythm that propels it forward. “I have a void between my legs and I imagine my insides are black,” Roditis sings.  

Funeral Soundtrack #4 ends on two tracks that provide insight into the question that many people ask themselves when they first hear the name “Destroy Boys”—is it a command to destroy all boys, or are they a group of boys who destroy things? Marisa Dabice of Mannequin Pussy and Kat Moss of Scowl collaborated on “You Hear Yes,” an earworm that’s loud and scrappy. Though I’d cringe a little to call it a feminist anthem, it touches on sillier parts of the patriarchy like the lack of pockets on womens’ clothing while also tackling sexual assault head-on and being treated like a piece of meat: “Medieval punishment for saying I won’t make you come … I’ll crush you like the bug you are underneath my thumb.” 

“Boyfeel,” on the other hand, is about gender nonconformity from the perspective of Roditis’ own nonbinary identity. In the music video for the song, “bind me up” is used both as literal imagery of chest binding and as a metaphor for feeling tied up and controlled by expectations of how gender should or shouldn’t look. If the twofold answer to the question of Destroy Boys’ name wasn’t clear already, “Maybe I’m a fag instead of a dykе / Or maybe I’m both at the same time,” is an obvious wink at both interpretations. The album is, in many ways, a funeral for old identities and relationships, but it’s also a celebration of new ways of living. See Destroy Boys live—in fact, more alive than ever—when they play at The Complex on October 29. –Asha Pruitt

Read more recent album reviews:
Robber Robber – Wild Guess
beabadoobee – This Is How Tomorrow Moves