Cold 2 The Touch – Album Review

Angel Du$t: Cold 2 The Touch                          

Run For Cover Records

All Formats

Out Now

Rock & roll riffs and hardcore attitude typify this Baltimore-based fireball of kinetic energy, who are about to embark on a lengthy tour to promote this blast of majestic mischief. MK Bennett buckles up.

Hardcore both knows and keeps the score. Back in the primordial swamp of the 70s, a political time we have accidentally returned to, authority figures, whether the police, the courts or your teachers, had a pithy phrase to describe the crushing of dissent. The phrase was a short, sharp shock. An alliterative jackboot, its catch-all use to keep anyone troublesome in line was as widespread as it was vague and demonic. The parents of 70s children, often wartime babies themselves, were expected to crush souls in the same way theirs had been, and many were happy to oblige. Still, this is the generation that birthed Black Flag, Dischord Records, Minor Threat, and Bad Brains. Generational horror begets great art.

This brief and colossal mass of melded sound is a short, sharp shock, a kick against the pricks, and of complacent and stagnant living. Its 26 minute run time includes guest vocalists and peers across the board, and it hurtles along like a Japanese bullet train, sleek and elegant with potential for derailment.

First song and newest video, Pain Is A Must sets out their stall perfectly, somehow sounding like early Suicidal Tendencies and Turnstile simultaneously. Honourable mention must always and forever go to The Descendants, who managed hook-laden hardcore way back when and to whom Angel Du$t respectfully nod, but there’s a million other things going on too. Justice Tripp is a magnificent human tornado, and he wrangles all these wild horses with a firm hand, a telling grunt and a knowing smile.

Deliberately upsetting the gatekeepers and the puritans for whom he rightfully holds particular disregard, there’s enough room here for the Minutemen and The Replacements too. Cold 2 The Touch itself is a hardcore blast of punk fury with a pop flavour, Pay To Cum with a god-tier drum sound. The influences, as with the rest of this magnificent record, swim in and out of focus, never visible long enough to establish by radar. It manages to “ Na na na “ over the heaviest, dirtiest section and still sounds perfect. I’m The Outside is a delight, a dance around two usually disparate ideas that, as per usual with this band, works wonderfully. The old school vocal melody mixed with the modernistic tone and production that is often their trademark is sharpened to a fine point of finessed steel. The backing vocals meet the hardcore tradition handsomely, every shouted chorus a memory of 80s New York. I’m The Outside proves Milo went to college yet the world still fucked him regardless.

Jesus Head is pure Westerberg/Stinson heartbreak, the cracked voice and treated guitars carrying it along like broken waves, almost country, almost Athens, Georgia. It is peerless Americana, regardless of the genre you’ll choose to file it in, a lament for the unnameable. Zero returns us home and you can see the stage divers in your mind’s eye, soundtracked by this bass-led behemoth and its majestic breakdown. Downfall meanwhile, may have nothing to do with the internal politics of a fascist breakdown but it does have a joyous propulsion where everything sits inside the riff and moves, more poetry in slow motion.

Dust is a song for the lost, an affecting narrative seemingly about avenging a dead lover. Pleasingly reminiscent of Uncle Tupelo or Calexico, its meaning is defined more by the performance than the depth, where the anguished howl of a man in pain is evident. The guitars take a backwoods stroll before erupting into something much different musically; the context shifts, but the intent remains the same. Nothing I Can’t Kill starts aggressively but melodically, Fugazi-like and hurtling through its bass gears with fluid perfection. A shout out to the rhythm section here, as the skill on show is breathtaking, a snake uncoiling itself.

Man On Fire is gorgeous slinky malevolence; the music tells you a story and the vocals sell you a narrative before once again throwing itself headlong into the crowd. As with the rest of this record, it is produced to near perfection; every snare hit is a crack to the brain, synapse snapping. The Knife leads us into the final stretch of this feral wonder, the constant riff changing eventually grinds purposefully into concrete feedback that leads right into the final song, The Beat, a fantastic hardcore blast of weighted genius and an appropriately fitting end, given the space in covers in its brief runtime. It is perhaps its collaborative nature that has made the default brilliance of it into such an expansive experience. Influences drop in from everywhere, not just the comparative strictness of punk and hardcore. The guest vocalists’ impact further, bringing a proper reverence and scene celebration to this glorious half hour.

Ultimately, it is pure rock and roll. There are so many fragments of historical brilliance referenced, sometimes momentarily, that you are dazzled by the sheer spectacle of its construction. A little Link Wray here, a pinch of Circle Jerks there, it is a juggernaut you’ll never get bored by. It is, in the end, vastly more than the sum of its parts, and almost certainly an early contender for album of the year.

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All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram