The ultimate (bile, guts and angst) outing from these top-notch Aussie dark punks... can't fault it really. Love everything about this. Arse's releases have already become classics in my mind. This is a band I'm going to keep listening to until the Sun burns out.
Primitive Species from 2017 was a refreshing fusion of obnoxious techno-like intensity and primitive hardcore punk energy. ARSE’s identity sounds like a drunken, stumbling warning of something very ugly and violent coming your way. You can also dance to it if that’s your thing. Safe Word doesn’t bend radically from the face-melting formula previously introduced, but they do tend to flirt with more traditional “rock tropes,” and it works surprisingly well. At times when riffing out like SUICIDE or FLIPPER, the neanderthal singing reminds you of why you’re still here. During its eleven minutes on the turntable, Safe Word actually creates an album-like quality. I suppose ARSE is kind of what PISSED JEANS wish they were: great songwriting and musical abilities performed for dumb people.
Safe Word was the next EP from Arse, proudly presented by Grupo and Erste Theke Tontraeger Records, direct from planet earth. Recorded amidst one member's medical catastrophe, nationwide touring and utter global decay, the trio follow up their lauded debut with the next phase in punk rock evolution -- a crucial meditation on humankind's tendency to lean into a fucked situation rather than get itself out. With no topic too hot, no stone unturned and no pooch left to screw, Arse are a band who thinks big, baby. Internal warfare, assured climate doom, the incurable ill of the male psyche, and a song exclusively about hating world leaders are all there to be discovered across these four burning mantras. Complete with live-wire guitars, sledgehammer rhythms and absolutely smouldering production from the band’s own Jonathan Boulet, Arse are truly a band on fucking fire.
Kaputt. is the next phase of Australian insanity by ARSE, who's last recorded work came out in 2019, right before the world truly shat the proverbial bed. It’s all been leading up to this; a six-track blast on everything from climate denialism to crooked law enforcement that will excoriate your earholes and arseholes in minutes of raw power. Strap in.
