‘Pitting me against you, And us against them, But we won’t take the bait, Can’t give them the satisfaction, Because all we get is smaller cages and shorter chains’ (Smaller Cages, Shorter Chains)

Tear It On Down is an album born of bristling defiance and tentative hope.  At times, it can feel like we have front row seats for the end of days, entrenched interests flailing ever more desperately to protect their power.  This can lure us into being trapped in a perpetual present, susceptible to a despair born of forgetting.  Forgetting how far we have come and how powerful we can be when we act together.  And it is only by remembering this power that we can resist and create a different future.

This is the Los Angeles’ band’s third album and follow up to 2024’s Love Child and their sound continues to be defined by an undying adoration of the riff.  Metallic in their heft, hardcore in their snap yet indelibly imbued with a 1970s’ rock strut and fizzing with garage punk urgency, the onslaught of tautly surging riffage is at the very heart of Tear It On Down.  The fleetingly flaring solos and the limber bounce of the rhythm section further fuel the rock’n’roll swagger, while the rampaging vocals frenetically dissect the need to break free from the self-serving narratives of division and to build our own resilience, both individually and as communities.

The fiercely choppy A New Love Language kicks thing off with an unapologetic bang.  It sets a high-octane tone that doesn’t relent for even a moment as the infectious agitations of Surveillance State and the muscular stomp of Bloostains are deftly intertwined with the impassioned melodicism of Smaller Cages, Shorter Chains and Tension.  What unfurls is a rousing call to wake up and regain our humanity, and our independence of thought, ‘The end of raids, The end of incarceration, The end of indoctrination, Tear it on down’ (Citta Violenta)