Chainsaw Magazine

To call the latest offering from Polio Club a musical disaster would be an insult to disasters, as a standard disaster implies an unforeseen twist of fate or a tragic act of nature, whereas this record feels entirely deliberate—a calculated, malice-driven assault on the fundamental principles of auditory harmony. It is less an album and more a sonic hemorrhage, a relentless and unyielding torrent of discordant notes and lyrical gibberish that crawls into your psyche like a persistent, incurable virus, offering no invitation to listen but rather an immediate demand to endure. The guitars do not play so much as screech and convulse in a futile, desperate attempt at melody, sounding less like tuned instruments and more like tortured sheet metal being dragged across asphalt while the drums pound with the mindless, erratic rhythm of a dying heart—unsynchronized, heavy, and completely devoid of groove or intention. If the seminal indie-pop minimalism of Beat Happening were subjected to a brutal, industrial assault with a lead pipe, the resulting sonic wreckage might vaguely approach the abysmal cacophony produced here, creating a relentless, discordant crawl through a barren, nihilistic wasteland where melody goes to die and rhythm is replaced by the spastic twitching of a dying machine. The vocals are entirely detached from traditional singing, delivering the tortured, breathless bleats of a man drowning in his own static and weeping for a sweet release of silence that he refuses to grant the listener, making other amateurish acts sound like finely tuned orchestral symphonies by comparison. Polio Club is not just a bad band, but the sound of an entire genre contracting a terminal disease and decaying in real time through your speakers—a cesspool of chaos and self-indulgent garbage that sets the very concept of music on fire, leaving behind nothing but acrid, unlistenable smoke that operates under the delusion that its sheer unlistenability is a form of revolutionary avant-garde expression.

Key Elements of the Failure

• Instrumentation: Harsh high-end treble replaces all warmth, turning melodic attempts into abrasive noise.
• Rhythm: Drums stumble behind the tempo rather than holding time, creating a disjointed, chaotic pulse.
• Vocal Delivery: Arrogant execution masked by heavy pitch-shifting effects that bury any real emotion under static.
• Mixing: Pushed to absolute maximum volume, resulting in an indistinct rumble that collapses the low end.

By the time the final track sputters to a halt—ending not with a grand climax, but with a lazy, whining loop of feedback that drags on for two excruciating minutes—the sense of relief is overwhelming, leaving behind a record that accomplishes nothing beyond testing the physical limits of human endurance and forcing the listener to reflect on the precious minutes of life they will never get back.