Since We Were Kids

With a teeth-grinding metallic undertow that might compare with everyone from Verbal Abuse to Poison Idea, tho with vocals that feel like a harsher version of Pegboy or similar to jugular-popping Cro-Mags, this California unit burns hard through hardcore territory and skate-punk vibes with this album haunted by incessant anger and pain, dark visions and boiling feelings.

Tunes like “Past Tense,” with its thunderous, insistent chops, and smart-edged lyrics, chop away at the modern world, which unleashes ruthless havoc on the past with little to no regard for people and rituals, lifestyles and history. The cool places become trauma zones -- demolished, ruined, wiped out of existence -- as technology is delivered with a steep price: newer often means yesterday becomes bulldozed, without our input.

A blitzkrieg of drums on “Dream” sets off the hoarse vocal panic about how we should seize the day, plus know when and how we can do it, since yesterday slips from our numbed fingers, the people we love get eliminated, and thoughts get all jumbled up in our head. It even has a thunderous hair-flinging breakdown for a mosh-pit cataclysm.

Meanwhile, “Stay Gold” makes me think of the motto, “Stay gold, Ponyboy,” from the book and film the Outsiders. This mid-tempo rock-punk delivers on both crunch and menace while not exaggerating the issues at stake: final goodbyes, trying not to be jaded, hold on to what’s left of our innocence, and coping with the pain that rushes our limbs and heart.

The rest of the album is just as intoxicating, pummeling, and rough-skinned, like the roiling fretwork and bruised choruses of "Waxing Pathetic," which bursts at the seams with ideas about tall tales, made-up scenes, tainted evidence, and unflattering memories, including the bullshit world that some people conjure instead of dealing with grim truths and gritty reality.

And even more honest and enduring is "Scumbag Immunity" about the filth and fury of kids growing up in a germ-filled adolescence, with black eyes and lead paint in their blood, as well as scrapes and scabs covering their pasty arms, all shaped by the “logic of common sense,” in which doctors aren’t lording over a safe-at-any-cost world.