Just when one thought one knew what to expect from POW! they surprise everyone with a vigorous and rabid album’s worth of moody cybernetic punk that’s frankly their best yet. Their fourth album is oil-dipped in a rainbowed slick of dread, yet the songs are buoyed by tight tunes that seem to have a lot of fun among the ruins of the future, perhaps with an eye to a less gloomy horizon? Melissa Blue’s sharp elbowed synths jostle with Byron Blum’s zap gun guitar in an ominous fog of oscillations, and yet somehow it gets the toe a-tapping. The band got darker and more catchy at the same time, for which some credit is due to the excellent drumming of Cameron Allen and the fantastically future savvy production by Byron Blum and Tomas Dolas. Lots of sticky punk heart resin-layered in a futuristic-scanning bionic bop.
LP $19.00
05/10/2019
CD $12.00
05/10/2019
MP3 $9.90
05/10/2019
FLAC $11.99
05/10/2019
POW! continue their danse macabre in the laser glow of hi-beam synthesizers, with a new batch of synth-punk candy that will rot your teeth: Crack An Egg. Vacuum-sealed, chrome gleaming, propulsion pounding, eyebrows arched and slightly pixelated, this album is like the cupie-doll face beckoning from a digital billboard outside your hovercraft window. From a none-too-distant dystopia and on to your turntable — VCFs slowly open across a smogged-out horizon as they urge you to take that “Necessary Call,” warn moodily against a “Cyberattack,” and inexplicably “Crack An Egg” in honor of the human race. Synthetic earworms squirm into and out of view like twinkling city lights through evening’s opaque air, feasting on terse punk skeletons. The neon is buffed to an aerosol sheen by Chris Woodhouse behind the blinking motherboards, with a streetlight or two of Gary Numan’s slanting through the door. The automatons know where the party’s at — follow them.
LP $19.00
02/10/2017
CD $12.00
02/10/2017
MP3 $9.90
02/10/2017
FLAC $11.99
02/10/2017
POW! is re-chromed and ready to soundtrack your dystopian near future. Harsh neon synths battle with zipline guitars for space above a dark and teeming cityscape. Your guide is always in the shadows, you can’t make out his face but you hear his crazed diatribe as he wards off all affronts. Razor-sharp punk at its core, Fight Fire is fleshed out with inventive and catchy synth work—and the floating bits of atmospheric expansion between tracks only heighten the paranoid atmosphere. These tunes have a sci-fi depth, a moody bite, and a startling clarity sharpened to a point by the wizard hand of Chris Woodhouse, who helmed the magnetization. Recommended listening for future-punk teens and grown adults alike.
LP $19.00
04/14/2015
CD $12.00
04/14/2015
MP3 $9.90
04/14/2015
FLAC $11.99
04/14/2015
Deep in the graveyard of San Francisco, a young hand with black and cracked nails is pushing up through a broken pile of e-slag. Bitter teeth tear through server cables and motherboards, desperate to be free from the ever-deepening sludge of tech waste… the iPhone is the new styrofoam cup. Stepping over them—eyes glazed, feet dragging, blank face aglow in the eerie luminescence of smart phones—is the inspiration for these songs. San Francisco has long attracted newcomers… but now the city faces the most dangerous, the most egregious and blandest of them all—people with lots of money. In the vacuum that is now expanding, there is a ragged, determined sound vibrating out of the dirty underground. This is POW! Deep ’80s synth bass percolates under the circuit-swamp-fried-egg guitar. The drums, a teenage tiger’s heartbeat, underpin vocals delivered like a deadpan face-slap from a kid half your age. The recording is simple and dense, and it has a natural Doppler effect on headphones. It’s perfectly poppy and rough at the same time, and it has a message, so dig in, ear-wise. Heed the warning bells echoing down the streets of San Francisco clogged with the cholesterol of normals. Next they could be knocking at your door… —John Dwyer
LP $19.00
01/21/2014
CD $12.00
01/21/2014
MP3 $9.90
01/21/2014
FLAC $11.99
01/21/2014