STRESS TEST are the perfect soundtrack to doomscroll to, but then also hopefully actuate some change in this bastard world whether it’s putting some tyrants up against the wall exercising your right to protesting or… I don’t know, volunteering at a soup kitchen or something? That’s pretty punk actually. The Portland quartet surely have a lot of fodder to work from seeing as that city has had its share of lows the past decade and if you can’t see the aching malaise and ethical torment that constantly grips the rest of the country or the world, I’d simply assume you needed a guide dog to navigate life due to being so blind. And hey, I just binged season two of Squid Game in a day so let’s get this shit popping.
Honestly, the emotional core of STRESS TEST isn’t as spit-in-your-face pissed as comes off of on first listen. Vocalist Brandon Hill (also of Unto Others) says, ‘this record documents an ongoing struggle to maintain a positive and hopeful outlook on humanity and its future; all of the songs on it are reflections of times when I’ve failed to do that… I’m motivated by all of the hours and days and years that leave you demoralized and disgusted. Disgusted with the world, or especially with yourself.’ This is something I heartily fuck with. Mean, loud, ‘negative’ music does not mean wholesale absence of goodness thematically speaking – in fact, we only recognize that metal and punk focus on more negative aspects of reality (or beyond as most extreme music is) because we know it embodies the absence of that opposing positivity. We see the bad because we know it’s in contrast to the good or at least decent. Hill’s distillation of this debut album is spot on in that regard.
It’s also the Iron Reagan album that I’ve been waiting for. Not in the biting sense, but in the tonal and at times sonic sense. The crossover appeal of “Suffer” has a foundational riff that sounds like something Land Phil and the dudes would put together, not to mention the sweeping orbital laser strike focus on puritanically authoritarian religion many songs touch on (“God Sucks” and “Eternal Bliss” rip) without the levity. That’s not all either – “Bastard Behavior” stings of the same loud grind-death that Netherlands’ Collision did in their prime, and Hill’s frothing, fork-tongued bellows remind me a bit of what Tommy Meehan pulls off with Squid Pisser.
And yet, STRESS TEST still feels uniquely voiced in a plasma-hot manner. The mixture of hardcore, thrash metal, grind, and other aesthetics speaks to the diversity and broad influences that drive the band like a nuclear engine. Though there’s certainly a moral core at the center of the album, it comes off more like a gang initiation with its intensity from the gang vocals of ‘religion is a prison!‘ in “God Sucks” to the dense guitars all over this not even 18-minute album. A lot of punk and hardcore tends to have these more wiry guitar tones mixed with lower tuning and heavy effects, but these are robust-ass sounds carried by strong writing worth their weight.
If there’s a righteous bone in STRESS TEST‘s brolic body, it derives from the ‘no gods, no masters’ school of thought. It’s not something you need to hear me pontificate on though – this is one of the shortest reviews I’ve written in years for a reason. You just need to let STRESS TEST kick you in the chest like it did me. Every verse is a homeless camp in your city, every riff an armored cop shooting a beanbag round into the stomach of some kid standing up in the streets for what he believes in, every drum fill a man forced to shoplift to feed his family. Those types of things motivate the band and they should motivate you to want better for all of us.
