Album Review: Bitter Branches – Your Neighbors Are Failures (Rude Records)

Hardcore punk band Bitter Branches take a decidedly pragmatic approach to their new album, Your Neighbors Are Failures. Songs revolve around the frustration gained from years of first-hand experience with exactly how the world works, and often how it doesn’t. From seeing both peers and heroes fade slowly into comfortable obscurity rather than hopeful daydreams, Bitter Branches offer a refreshingly honest observation of society, scrapes and scars on full display.

Your Neighbors Are Failures will be released on February 25th, 2022 via Rude Records.

There is no denying that Bitter Branches are doing their own thing, musically, on this album. A record that has an innate rawness to it that accurately portrays the feelings Bitter Branches wish to showcase.

Musically, the band delivers something that sits uncomfortably between hardcore and punk, neither one or the other but also not constrained by those labels. It’s an album of freedom for Bitter Branches, how else can you explain the difference between the first three tracks? Along Came a Bastard; bassy, methodical, rhythmic and prone to hardcore flair-ups. Whereas Circus is a short, off-centre blast of noise with an underlying intensity and The Man Who Never Cries is over 5-minutes of jarring guitar tones and vocals that alternate between spoken-word and roars of frustration.

You might be a bit confused by what you’re hearing but it will have impact and it does compel you to listen on. Well worth it too as Plastic Tongues’ alternates between rockier rhythms and heavier, slow passages. The unfiltered honesty bleeds through, not just with the vocals and lyrical content, but the way in which the instrumentation makes the lies seem so tiresome.

Have You Tried Jogging and Chewing on Vitamins are two tracks that take on the falsity of the ‘don’t feel bad, just do this’ world we live in. While not as literal as the track titles suggest thanks to the imaginative way Bitter Branches conveys their feelings. The former has bassy rhythm with moments of abrasive quality, whereas the latter is one of the wilder and punkier tracks on the whole album.

A challenging record continues to see Bitter Branches channel all their frustration into making uniquely unrefined music. A constant source of fascination, Sorry You’re Not a Winner is as close to a ‘foot-tapper’ as you’re going to get. Although Solo Trip’s riffs are pretty groovy too but the way in which this track jabs away is quite jerky.

Monsters Among Us brings a bit of psych-drama to proceedings, possibly the album’s most unusual sounding effort. Before Your Neighbors Are Failures wraps up with the longest and most varied track overall in Show Me Yours. Varied because it has all the weirdness, hardcore explosivity and punky abrasiveness heard throughout, rolled into one.

Bitter Branches – Your Neighbors Are Failures Full Track Listing:

1. Along Came a Bastard
2. Circus
3. The Man Who Never Cries
4. Plastic Tongues
5. Have You Tried Jogging
6. Chewing On Vitamins
7. Sorry You’re Not a Winner
8. Solo Trip
9. Monsters Among Us
10. Show Me Yours

Links

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