Artist: Leaking Head
Title: Better Homes & Gardens
Release: EP / Digital
Year: 2022
Label: Mangoe Records
I hope you heard that knockout demo tape from Leaking Head in 2021. Now I’m so fucking stoked to see this Rochester, New York band back in action and bringing their signature rot-core to the forefront on their new Better Homes & Gardens EP.
This band is great in combining elements of raucous punk rock and full throttle hardcore thrash, while the vocalist Cougar’s spoiled-brat, raspy vocals seal the deal. Seriously primal slabs of hardcore punk with a searing intensity from start to finish. I know that saying the cliché that a band plays a form of straight-up, no-frills hardcore punk doesn’t really say anything specifically about a record, but in this case I mean Leaking Head being true to the essence and nihilistic spirit of the genre, even down to the way they approach the vocals. After releasing their demo, Leaking Heard have been compared to Clevo bands like 9 Shocks Terror, H100s, Inmates, and Gordon Solie Motherfuckers (GSMF), but while all the speed, thrashing melees and energetic performance of the aforementioned bands are definitely right up front, I think Leaking Head have come to develop their own distorted sound and a modern day sense of hopelessness and bitter anger in their lyrics.
All these comparisons however, remind me of an old biography for GSMF that says the band was formed to pretty much destroy the watered down, wholesome and fashionably safe hardcore punk that was dominating the scene. I think that such a description pretty much fits Leaking Head’s mission as well. There’s never a dull moment here if you want your hardcore dirty, honest, and such that makes you really feel the anguish. Top of the heap thrashing punk to say the least.
