Trash Magz

With a surging, feral restlessness and tough-as-nails wackiness, Trash Magz shake up the scene with a rambunctious style that feels like a wanton collision between the Spits, Murder City Devils, and the Cows. In the hallow land of Houston, Texas bands like Really Red, Mydolls, and Culturcide, Trash Magz pursue their agenda: a vindicative push against same-samey politics, lamebrain privileged hipsters, and racist idiots. And they do so with tremendous, unnerving, short, brutal templates.

Out of the gate, “Split” exudes an everyday pissed-off anguish about a nation sunk into flames and discord as the “new regime … looks like a déjà vu.” The tempo is not hardcore, just a wall of punk firepower and weird vocals mannerisms to keep you on edge. Meantime, “Montrose” takes aim at the former neighborhood epicenter of hippie, rocknroll, and queer culture that has suffered from pricey rounds of recent mega-gentrification. Bootlickers have moved in from the burbs to cast their social media spells, all paid for by daddies bursting at the seams with investments as their kids take the plunge into vice and what’s left of street culture.

“Out of My Head” uses manic repetition and a proto-hardcore velocity to pound home the chaos of running mad and free against the creepy sheep and dumbasses surrounding us, which makes one feel like the ground is cracking underneath: mental states get weary and worn while in a constant fight against clones and conformists.

Other tunes run the gamut of describing the modern fucked-up world, whether “Won't Get Flagged" (with its emphasis on “the fear in a city mob,” agendas pushed on innocent ones, and potential bombs hidden in the cities of strife) or the wayward new wave “Scrapers” (which decries racist phobes and bigot bullies, deniers and cretins).

"Dismantle” launches a more direct attack, calling on people to recognize the people who take “fearful flights to freedom” to the U.S., only to get slapped in the face, while also exhorting the working class to “to rise, to do what’s right … dismantle the machinery.” Trash Magz see that as a rational response to a world with surging profits as workers suffer under white-collar criminal office regimes.

No song barrels ahead for more than two minutes, and each serves up a dose of shocking truths wrapped in bad-ass attitudes, all bound together by punk-as-hell energies: keyboard blurts, throaty vocal rasps, electric-woven sizzling guitar, and audio clips that begin each tune with a taste of modern media rupture.