Bad Parents on Secret Records

Not quite sure how I ended up with this one, seems to have been released in '09 according to the discog page, I have no emails from either the label or the band, whose web pages are all down but myspace...so here it goes.

Unlike Super Secret records these are just the first level of secret (but not having any kind of online presence definitely helps) and this EP/single from Bad Parents "Purple Heart" is playing around with metal and hardcore elements, just real heavy, far off cavernous buried vocals screeching, the lead singer completely losing his mind sounding a little thin, that dangeous kind of thin that sounds pieced together in a basement rehearsal space by some real miscreants who thankfully are off the street. Honestly thank god for music, the number of misfits who would be out there breaking shit instead of starting a band is frightening. And from Long Beach too! You'd think they would have better things to do than create these scary, desperate cries for help. The guitar work and yelling is almost liars-esque at times, there's a slight off kilter post sound that peeks in now and then...a sustained piercing note making some kind of terrible melody. When it picks up halfway this goes grunge with a middle east flavor if that makes any sense. The vocals are howling around, yelling into that music void. "I killed you for nothing at all!", the lyric a pretty scathing sentiment paired with the idea of being awarded a medal for that kind of violence...or isn't that when you're wounded? A low grade sound of slightly evil darkness.

B-Side"Speech Caged" comes at the garage-y darkness this time with rumbling toms and a faster melodic distortion line and those howling from a distance vocal that's more agressive this time getting into a hardcore metal. Lots of intricate solo work, the guitar barely driving the melody, it's more the backseat driving from the lead vocals that are making this thing swing all over the highway. Dirty metal with dark themes and veering into weird punk at times...they aren't going straight for any one of those audiences in an attempt to bridge the gap?
"One Clean Finger" (?!!!!) Yikes I don't even want to know where the rest of the digits have been. A dark single note almost 3 Imaginary Boys style melody creeping along over another tom beat. All instrumental. A bassline comes in under this percussion, almost groovy but from that same dark place. Metal-ish instrumental? What is this the Fucking Champs?

Xeoxed sleeve and insert, true DIY style, with no use for any sort of online presence, I got to hand it to them. This was the only place I could find this for sale. There's nothing more punk than not even being bothered to look at a computer these days. Nice work. No sample of this, you're taking a chance. Like the old days.