New York City hardcore band Dog Breath are here to take a bite out of racism and class-based subjugation with Isang Bagsak.
The album is a call for unity and a rallying point to shore up resolve for the fights ahead. For as surely as one tyrant will fall, there will always be another ready to take his place. The nightmare is never over for people of color or people who find themselves doing the real work to keep society alive and functioning while others sit on top of them and take the lion’s share of what should belong to all.
Check out Dog Breath tearing it up at the Market Hotel in San Francisco back in 2018, and then look me in the face and tell me you don’t wish you were in that crowd. You can’t do it! Don’t even try to be that silly!
Isang Bagsak starts unapologetically, with a man quoting Mao Tse-tung and demanding the end of oppression around the world, concluding that he and others are willing to take action to end material repression and imperial violence “by any means” necessary. Right on cue, the tempo picks up and the guitars begin ripping at the bars and bricks around them until the whole house is rocked to the ground. May I remind you that this is only the beginning …
Dog Breath’s sound is going to be familiar to fans of barking, New York hardcore that packs plenty of bite, but that’s not the only trick this old hound has learned. Dog Breath also have an abiding fascination and appreciation for hip hop, best displayed on the slapping intro to their 2018 album Enemy, but also by the sharp, cleanly outlined flow of the Bambu feature which can be found on the crushing power-violence beatdown “Float / Kanye West Dropped Out.”
In addition to the grime of NYHC, Dog Breath grimly wallow in the septic pools of U.S.- and Japenese-influenced crust, with “Corn Bipp-19” sounding like it emerged from a drainage ditch that acts as a basin for the frothy, oily run off of Tragedy and Disclose, while “Celine Freon” sounds like it’s been recreationally abusing household cleaning chemicals to the point where it’s brain has become as putrescent an aluminum can filled with raw sewage or an Aus-Rotten album.
Probably one of the cooler parts of Dog Breath’s Isang Bagsak is all of the love they get from the hardcore community. There is an astounding number of shout-outs recorded for this album, (enough to fill three full tracks!) all of which will lead you to spend the majority of your weekend following up on all the name-drops and scouring Bandcamp for your next favorite hardcore band.
You can stream the entirety of Isang Bagsak below via Bandcamp.
