croak - "ocean without a shore"

croak was at the center of many formative physical-social-audio-sensory experiences i had as a teenager in washington's burnout-underground circa ~2015. this band was kind of insane, it was four high-schoolers with serious chops & obvious chemistry writing no-wave-y screamo for an audience of like fifty people who all knew and kind of hated each other. their live sets were heavy heavyyyyyy. sometimes the band would vamp on one motif for like 10 minutes doom-style until the crowd couldn't take it and started fighting. there was one basement show where a dude split his head open on the corner of a washing machine. another started with two scene casualty Guys spontaneously getting married by a real (alleged) officiator, saying their vows onstage, nd ironically making out in a Not Gay Way (sure l,ol) as chaos broke loose at the first blasts of "A Realization That Everything Hurts."

this CD's engineering is so, so fried, but my rose-colored-headphones love the way it sounds. the drums (ringy, worn out heads getting bashed further and further away from their own tuning) combine with the bass (skronked, greasy, intonation drifting seasick-style) to create a wonderfully dull sound-smear, the consumer-audio-recording-equipment equivalent to digital cameras' low-resolution-translation of shadows into grey & black smudged squares. the grater-sharp guitar and completely-dry screaming are flashlight beams pendulum-swinging across the drum + bass's darkness. the mix never turns all the way into mud, although we do start to approach wet soil, perhaps with some pinecones in it. or maybe we are staring out at the water from the shore of Locust Beach, realizing the sun has disappeared, can barely make out the shape of the waves.

teenage angst xtreme screaming rock is 4 feeling like ur barely afloat in an Ocean Without a Shore...then u grow up and realize u were literally standing on the shore the whole time and just staring at the ocean so intently u forgot abt all the other shit on the beach Lol

Five Stars RIYL chainsmoking in your favorite sweater.