Artist: Pink Frost
Album: Until the Summer Comes
Label: Under Road Records
Release Date: 16/09/2022
Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Written by Alfred C. Key IV
As I sit listening to this record I can honestly say that this band combines it’s influences well. Traces of Red Machine by Fugazi are heard with the pop delivery of Sonic Youth. This band is truly post punk. Complete with abstract lyrics of “go pray with your knife.” and the love inspired lyrics of Halo baptizes me in a wash of post punk fuzz. This band produces a work of art that causes me to sing down the wooded roads of New England. With pounding drums of the skink and the heavy drone of Detroit Mercy I am treated to a compelling and diverse album.
The vocal delivery is not a bark like early post punk but a serenade. The voice on this record reminds of Rite of Spring and a better version of Smashing Pumpkins. With this said I hope to the goddess that the lead singer’s ego isn’t like that of Billy Corgan. If one does not know a man personally then we the listener must realize our perception of word play. The word play on this record is one part poetry, one part love song. Conveying the message of abstract thought combined with stereotypical lyrics of falling in love as conveyed on the song Until Summer Comes. Which has “this will never last” as the opening lyric. What does this tell me of the singer’s ego one might ask. Several songs on the album convey the message that they want airplay which means that the band has a certain mentality which could lead to egocentrism if they make it big.
It would be easy to label this record and band as pop but in actuality they are not. Maybe in truth it’s their humility holding them back. With this said it saddens me and points to the state the music world is in when a band this talented only have a measly play count of thirty to ninety on soundcloud. This music is not extreme by any stretch of the term and it would behoove the music world to pay a little bit of attention to a band who is writing love songs akin to REM. Maybe that’s the problem. We in the rock world are too busy replicating love songs and imitating the vocal styles of the past rather than creating new vocal styles. This band does not have a problem with being unique lyrically but the average listener who has been taught to hear pop in everything will say without a shadow of a doubt that they vocally sound like Smashing Pumpkins.
With all it’s musical creativity and pop inspired pieces Pink Frost has seriously embraced fuzzy pop and psychedelia over the aggressive ball out melodicism combined with the hardcore antics of it’s predicessors. I’m not sure if this was intentional but it definitely creates a new style within the post punk genre.
Listen to and pre-order the album:
Bandcamp
