Riot Boys, by Cruelster

Riot Boys

by Cruelster

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LP
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Includes unlimited streaming of Riot Boys via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Crisis in Local Government Part 3 00:47	buy track
2.	Cox Triv and Rover 01:10	buy track
3.	Deleted Leader 00:48	buy track
4.	The Pipeline Could Work 01:32	buy track
5.	Dum Fuk 01:05	buy track
6.	Uneven Unit 00:32	buy track
7.	Why Did They Do That To Me Back Then 01:44	buy track
8.	American Boots for Who 01:56	buy track
9.	Billie Cloth 01:11	buy track
10.	Screaming Leader 01:19	buy track
11.	Coco's Secret 01:27	buy track
12.	Gold Studded Citizen 01:23	buy track
13.	Laminate it Later 01:02	buy track
14.	Benghazi Mommy 01:56	buy track

about

Second 12” from this Cleveland band. They share members with Perverts Again, Bulsch, and Roobydocks, so if you’re following that scene this is already on your “to-buy” list, and rightly so. This group of people is making some of the most innovative, interesting, and contemporary-sounding punk I’ve heard, and Riot Boys is an essential piece of the puzzle. However, even if you can hear how interesting, important, and great it is, it will still try your patience. That’s because, while other parts of the punk scene try to create a kind of punk (or, more broadly, liberal) utopia, Cruelster engage with the shit the rest of us do our best to ignore, and it’s fucking ugly. Nowhere is that clearer than on the lengthy sample that starts the album. The narrator reads a letter to the editor of a Captain America comic book, and as the letter unfolds we gradually understand the writer is a nut. The letter continues to get weirder until it culminates in a series of death threats against the editors. Of a fucking Captain America comic. This is the perfect segue into “Crisis in Local Government Part III,” whose chorus (insofar as you can call anything in a Cruelster song a chorus) is “I want to see American Sniper / I want to see Bradley Cooper as Chris.” While their music is jagged, awkward, and interesting, what’s unsettling about Cruelster is how they dig deep into this mentality, pushing past the Fox News caricature and getting at the mundane—and human—thought processes behind it. It’s a place most punks won't go, and for that reason it’s worth going there. That Cruelster marry this aesthetic to weird, interesting, and powerful music is either the cake or the icing, depending on your perspective. - Sorry Tate