Brain stem cracking scum-punk
Musician John Dwyer has been a part of a fair amount of bands, artists and groups throughout the years. Often changing the band names from album to album. What was named the Orinoka Crash Suite became OCS and so forth. This time, OSEES most recent record A Foul Form is a dirty gust of punk rock. It takes many of the savage and primal techniques from punk of the 70s and 80s from bands such as Black Flag and the Misfits. In fact the final track, “Sacrifice” is a cover of the Rudimentary Peni song of the same name. Techniques such as the fast pace drums, distorted guitar, anti establishment messaging and a more DIY recording as this album was recorded in Dwyer’s basement during the height of the pandemic. Dwyer, according to an interview with The Aquarium Drunkard, states he recorded the vocals for the album over Christmas 2021 while sick with COVID-19. The pandemic seemed to spark a focus or a drive to finish the album.
The album begins with a long drawn out twist of noise before slamming into high gear with the singer shouting about despair for life being so futile. “What the fuck is going on / Human life is not that long / Why die every night?” “Funeral Solution” is a perfect song to start off this album. It sets the tone for the listener and you immediately know what kind of experience the next 20 minutes will be.
“A Foul Form”, the title track, expands on these feelings of anxiety as built up in the songs that came before. Describing the listener as hiding in the shadows and waiting to die. Specifically in the first verse where Dwyer sings “Wishing you had some power to break the walls down built inside your head,” and the song does break down, until the instrumental break. “A Burden Snared” literally ends with what sounds like a car engine breaking down. And that is when “Scum Show” comes in describing the putting a name to all this negativity and labeling it as “scum” all over everything including his soul. The singer embraces the fall into darkness and by the end of the song Dwyer states “the scum shows out tonight.”
A stand out piece in this track list and one that really embraces the spirit of hardcore punk is “Perm Act,” the eighth track. A fast song with two verses that paints an incompetent image of the police in the mind of the listener. Dwyer claims it is based on people he knew who had violent interactions with the police, and later had joined the force as an excuse to use their power to act out their aggressive tendencies in a way they could not before without a badge. The music video features rotoscope animation of police beating on a suspect, before tearing into each other out of confusion and aggression. It’s a powerful indictment of the brutality of police structures and protections these people get for such violence.
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