Turnstile - GLOW ON

It has been a really long time since I've had an album where I wanted to spend the time to just write a post all about that album and that album alone.  Might have been a Sturgill album a few years back.  But this album has wormed its way into my brain in a way that made me want to dive deep.

Turnstile is a hardcore punk band from Baltimore.  Normally, I'd never be a huge fan of a hardcore punk band.  I tried to get in to some of the old classics - Bad Brains and Minor Threat - but it's never stuck.  I liked some Black Flag or Henry Rollins, and found a few things in the periphery of hardcore, like Fugazi, that appealed.  These guys have some of those ultra-hard sounds, but to me they are more catchy and harmonic.  There is a real groove underlying these tunes.  Check "Underwater Boi" and the funk groove at the start that then turns into chunky riffage.

The album kicks off with "Mystery," which is a blast of loud and soft parts driven forward by some pounding drums.  Love when the bass pushes to the front and starts working it out.  And then the spaceship takes off at the end before "Blackout" pushes its way in.  These songs feel like they were written solely for me to scream them at the top of my lungs while a bunch of younger people shove their elbows into my ribs to make room for their pogo dance.  The drumming has a cool sound in this one, almost gives an eighties party vibe.  And when the song drops out and then ramps back up into a slow-aggro banger, I definitely feel the need to enter the pit.  "Don't Play" reminds me of early Red Hot Chili Peppers, from the opening freakout to the shrill guitar solo.  The thing about most of these tunes - they're aggressive and loud and fast hardcore songs, and yet they are also tuneful and melodic and catchy as hell.  Somehow, the album keeps building too, because "Holiday" (5th song) is a freaking jam or crunchy riffage and a beat that must be slam danced along with.  It also drops out and disappears for a bit in the middle before roaring back with a vengeance.  The album opener is the top streamer, but "Holiday" is right behind it with 7.8 million streams on Spotify.

That quiet intro, met with the fist of the riffage, is hard.  But there is still so much musicality and harmony here, it's not just a pure hardcore anger bomb.  And maybe that means these guys aren't as accepted in the hardcore world now, because their tunes can translate to me as a power-pop dance bomb in addition to screaming high-speed freakouts.  Either way, I'm digging it.

What?  A tiny desk!

Ben Folds looking mofo back there behind that mic and organ.  That breakdown at the end of "Endless" is freaking dope!  "TLC"'s call-out to Sly and the Family Stone is also dope.  Great performance, I'd love to see this stuff live.  Feels like it would be totally unhinged fun with a few short moments of sleepy chill like "Alien Love Call."

Also, go watch this freaking thing:

I've got goosebumps up and down my arms.  That freaking dude slays and makes the whole backbone for the band.  I want to scream along to that song in a big crowd immediately.

Cool disc.  Hopefully they'll be tagged in to play a show in Austin sometime soon and I can go severely damage my back while trying to dance with the kids.