Wether it’s playing, writing, reviewing, or organizing gigs, I’ve been into alternative music for more than 20 years now.
I discovered Excide back in 2023, not long after the release of their first album Deliberate Revolver (New Morality, 2022), and they caught my attention in no time. Years after, I can say that something’s really happening here and Bastard Hymns, the second full-length for the band and first one under SharpTone Records, is definitely giving me some credit.
As a huge fan of Snapcase, the sound and attitude of this band immediately hooked me but as I kept listening, I discovered there was a lot more than that.
This band is a huge anthology of all the music that I love the most: There’s hardcore; there’s noise; there’s grunge, a bit of nu metal here and there, early emo, all glued by a production that sounds like coming straight from the ’90s. The cool thing here is that this project has nothing to do with a revival operation: This band are just taking the whole thing to the next level. It’s all of it and none of it, a rewriting of what has been that really leads to a new definition of alternative music itself.
The band speaks this concept loud in the single Worth Your Salt, where—keeping aside the gorgeous noise-ish bass intro just for a second—the band urge you to catch a feeling out of what’s past, to make it yours rather than merely try to copy/paste according to a trend.
“Your Flowers,” the first single out of the record, deals with the greediness that the music industry often offers to the artists they sign. This was a very dear topic to musicians from the era when the biz started to show some interest in making money out of the alternative world, and it’s still a very actual yet dangerously way less cared one.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting, and I apologize if so, but I can’t not see Bastard Hymns as a generational record. For its style, message, lyrics, and production, this album is the perfect millennial manifest.
Talking about the song “Pariah,” singer Tyler Washington says, “In terms of the lyrics, it’s about feeling like a loser growing up. I’ve lived with this impostor syndrome for my whole life, and I still carry it. It’s probably a result of not ever fitting in as a kid.” I’m sorry, but no generation can feel as Bastard and Loser than the one that bridged between the boomers and the digital-natives.
I really can see nothing wrong in this record. There’s less songs like some of the beautifully emotional-overloaded on the previous record (like “The Portrait Now Perceived,” or “Marion”), but this one was written to make your head bang. And it works brilliantly.
It has what it takes to get immediate attention, and it will surely work for that.
My favorite ones are “Ruiner 95” and the title track: God knows how much I’d like to see a Celebrity Deathmatch reboot with its breakdown part as a theme song.
One last mention, that literally doubles the fun if not enough already. This record has a DOUBLE bonus track, and it’s a vinyl exclusive.
No one is making bonus tracks anymore; this band does, and it’s a huge plus.
After the last song, “Call Box,” the lucky vinyl owners will be able to hear the hidden track “Charm Machine” and, after that, another additional secret track.
I have never heard a band like this. Get ready to be stunned.
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