Help
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Album: 2053, out March 22 via Nadine Records
The beauty of post-punk is you never really know what you’re going to get (sort of like a box of chocolates…)—you could get mathy art punk, synth-y ‘80s nostalgia, danceable indie flair, or a rush of noise that’s almost noisy hardcore. Help take the latter approach with their riveting debut, churning out some of the most caustic, energetic post-punk in the game. Help sound like a band serenading the end of the republic, riotously fueling the uprising against the rich and powerful. It’s not angry music for the sake of anger, but listening to 2053 feels like a release value getting turned to the left (lefty loose-y, righty tight-y), and that’s very much what the band aimed to do, as drummer Bim Ditson explains:
“I mean, this record was completed by March of 2020. So, if it’s about anything, that stuff is worse now after the pandemic. I’ve felt like we’re on the edge of the collapse of western society all of my life. Maybe it’s because I’ve always worked super hard and still been poor, but I can’t wait for this place to burn. America has been a failed state since before my parents met. This record isn’t about anything new as far as I’m concerned. What it’s about is the reality that we live within and how fucked up that place is and how difficult it can be to ‘be’ at all. The rest is just details that people with power use to distract us from how they have fundamentally failed their fellow man. The intensity of my frustration is a product of my love. It is horrifying to love in modern times. I have enemies, but I have learned to not identify them too clearly because then I tend to become some sort of a low-resolution photocopy of them. Music is what I want to make in hell, and I feel I am in hell here on earth. So be it.”
Guitarist and vocalist Ryan Neighbors adds another $0.02:
“This record just stems from a place of, ‘when will this all stop.’ Keep in mind, we recorded this record before COVID and all of the other things that have happened since early 2020. But more or less, all of these songs fall under an umbrella of hopelessness and collapse. It seems to only be getting worse. I grew up in a very religious home, and I find great release screaming about the stresses that has caused, not just for me personally, but for so many others in a variety of ways. If there is anything our music can bring to people during these trying times, that is why we are here.”
Check out Help’s 2019 EP here:
For more from Help, find them on Bandcamp, Twitter, and their official website.
Photo courtesy of Help and Tyler Bertram
