Local Review: The Groanies – The Groanies

The Groanies
The Groanies
Self-Released
Street: 07.29
The Groanies = Buzzcocks + Social Distortion

The Groanies sound like the house band inside a slightly crushed Natural Light can on the side of the road. And that’s a fucking good thing. The Groanies are angry, loud and sloppy, with a familiar punk rock sound that hits you in the face with a shovel. Thank God this record is only an EP, because The Groanies seek to destroy, and with a full-length LP you may need that same shovel to dig yourself a place to rest.

The intensity never stops. It’s a punk rock masterclass: all fast tempo, distorted riffs and stripped-down, balls-out instrumentation. No weak links. The drums never let up, the bass slips into rockabilly grooves and the guitar is a flamethrower—all supporting a Buzzcocks, Pete Shelley-like wrecking ball vocal style that swings freely around, disrupting everything in its path. The self-titled EP comes in at just six songs, all just under or just barely peeking over that three-minute intensity mark.

The track “Dirty Dungeon”  is a sludgy, distorted opener that moves like a freight train that has found its proper speed: “I don’t feel pain anymore,” The Groanies sing, barely clinging to the tracks, “I don’t feel human anymore.” The opener is an all-out burner that quickly turns to the 1977 The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle feel of “Finger Plastic Poison,” a track that crashes into home plate at barely over a minute. 

Just when you think you’ve caught your breath, the tracks “Commander” and “In Black” arrive to throw you up against the wall like a bully who takes away your birthday (and Christmas, too). The album ends with “SYFP,” another burner with Social Distortion-like guitars thrown in and a “Whoa-o, Whoa-o, Whoa-o” chorus to give you a few seconds to breath. It’s a high fever dream of barely-controlled chaos and honest punk rock beauty.

The average Mike Tyson fight lasted about nine minutes, it takes a rocket roughly eight and a half minutes to reach orbit and a rollercoaster train pulls back into the loading platform in just 120 quick, intense seconds. Time is relative. The Groanies have delivered a Cracker Jack of a record that rips and hums at a frenetic velocity that transcends its own time. The Groanies may be a small little record, landing at 11 minutes and 97 seconds, but in impact it knocks you out.

The album is punk rock bliss. My advice is to play it on repeat and let it shove you around a bit. It’s worth it. –Russ Holsten

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