Faucet Deliver Perfectly Calculated Frenzied Noisy Hardcore Blasts On Debut LP

The fierce debut album Bitter Insane Melting from the Richmond, Virginia-area group Faucet explores dark spaces with thrilling abandon. Listening feels like crashing into the side of the barely metaphorical societal death machine that’s been holding struggling people back, and no matter any ensuing soreness, the freedom of the rush is worth it. 

The band perform a kind of deranged noise rock-infected hardcore punk. They’ve got super beastly tones across their whole concoction, but the sprawling performances feel like they’re falling atop one another with a very palpable, real world desperation — like, perhaps, an angry attacker is lurking just behind. The band’s cacophony of angular chaos feels inescapably alluring, like a storm that you quickly find yourself right in the middle of. The music provides a damn good time with a rush of gripping determined frenzy to boot.

The roaring, chaotic drum hits feel like rubble falling to the earth, and the super heavy, crushing bass and guitar performances feel like a chaotic ping pong along some filthy alleyway, as if the speaker is kicking themselves along. Atop the mix, the vocals from Laura Marina sound incredibly frenzied, like a paranoid, determined lurch for some kind of security that turns up absolutely none of it, and so the dynamically swinging desperation just keeps going. The vocals and the whole mix feel like they’re packing flails and shouts, like the speaker — and, once diving in, the listener as well — are frantically jumping around on a high ledge. There’s both danger and a rush, tied together by exhilaration in the moment.

Right away on track two, called “Crawl,” there’s a dark, grimly triumphant energy lurching through the blasts of drum beastliness and groove. The persistence of the hits there and elsewhere delivers a kind of psychedelia. Track four, called “Razor Consumer,” gets more into a more meandering song structure that feels defined by subtly nauseating but definitively upending groove. The blasts quickly come back with even more sonic dynamite on “Covered Face,” which helps drive in the sense that these songs are like a soundtrack to taking a sledgehammer to some walls.

Through the lurches of chest-thumping frenzy, all of the elements of Faucet’s performances lumber along in startlingly cohesive unison, like the band’s raw energy holds the beast together. Via the band’s performances, derangement isn’t just out there; it’s right here, infecting all our lives, and flailing through the music might be the only honest option.

5/5 Stars

Check out the music below!