Off With Their Heads - Hospitals

Unfortunately for this blog, I'm slipping back out of my strictly punk-ass phase and into another bout with avant-garde, purely noise, improvisational, and otherwise fucked-up tuneage. I think I detailed this bizarre transformation in an old entry on my other blog, but the gist is basically as follows: I spend roughly half my time in phase A, then without warning, morph to phase B. Phase A is populated strictly with pop-punk, hardcore, powerviolence, folk-punk, and indie rock. Phase B is packed with free jazz, krautrock, noise, ambient, proto-metal, power electronics, psychedelic, and other matters of experimental music. While I'm in either phase, I want nothing to do with the music in it's opposing phase. I don't know how to explain it, but that's pretty much what happens every 4 months or so.

So hey, if any staff guys wanna help me fill the 10 entry per month quota, I'd really appreciate the help. I'm still gonna post, but it's probably not going to be as "spirited" as usual (or whatever word you'd use to describe my shitty writing style).

Say, you like nearly cringe-worthy quantities of pain and self-loathing in your pop-punk, right?
Off With Their Heads feature some of the darkest, most angst-laden, almost laughably negative themes I've ever had the fortune of encountering in such an upbeat brand of music, and they're all the better for it. Formed in Minnesota in '02, these guys started off playing somewhat light-weight, keyboard-laden power pop/pop punk before trimming off the cheesiness, speeding up, and cranking the distortion. If you've ever been confounded enough by the stupidity of the term "orgcore" to look up the bands that define it, you've probably seen this band's moniker in there somewhere; in other words, these guys play gruff, aggressive, poppy punk with raw, pack-a-day vocals and an angsty edge. Oh... I guess the "orgcore" term also includes folk-punk, but don't expect Plan-It-X or junk band-esque stuff if you try out The Riot Before or Gaslight Anthem.

Hospitals is an mini-LP (I think it was a 10 inch... do they still make 10 inches? Also: obligatory penis joke) from 2006, and probably my favorite material of theirs. Stylistically, it's really not far from really anything else they've recorded (aside from the aforementioned keyboard bullshit), but it's probably their strongest, catchiest songs paired with the most appropriate production style they've ever used. There's only 8 songs on here, but each one is filler-free and memorable, including the itty-bitty "Idiot", which clocks in at around 25 seconds. Jovial anthems like "Die Today", "Heroin In NYC", and "Your Child Is Dead" all feature some really catchy, poppy melodies unfitting of such gutwrenching themes, but it's never overdone or reeks too strongly of irony. Even though it's obvious these guys have a sense of humor regarding their craft, their songs still contain huge doses of catharsis and emotional resonance, which makes me wonder if any of their lyrics reflect on the writers' personal experience. Maybe I'm just falling for their schtick, but my favorite track almost always gets my eyes to well up; the closing track, "Jackie Lee" slows things down, and is based around one really strong melody that permeates the entire song. I can't exactly relate to the song's lyrics, but they stand out for some reason:

Drunk in a waiting room, I can't fall asleep
Without knowing how you're gonna to be.
Think about what you have,
It isn't that bad.
Sometimes it's so hard to see.

High in a waiting room, I can't fall asleep.
It's not funny how things came to me.
Thought about what you had, it wasn't half bad.
Sometimes it's so hard to see.

My time spent in hospitals makes it seem impossible
To ever walk back through that door.
You've got so much more to do.
I'd trade it all with you.
I'm just a drug addict and nothing more.

The rest of their material is strong, too, especially the EPs featured on their All Things Move Towards Their End compilation, but this is definitely my most listened. I think it's been re-pressed recently, so you know the drill:
Download it here
then
Buy it here