Priced Out - Four Songs (self-released)

Punk, in its best moments, had something to say. Not just something, but something meaningful. It may have done so in a snotty, belligerent, blunt, even brutal sort of way at times, but maybe that is the only way to get the message across effectively. Actually, considering the lack of improvement in the quality of life for most of us since punk’s mid-seventies instigation, perhaps even those early agitators for chaos and change weren’t as direct and confrontational as they might have been.

So, Priced Out is following a fine tradition, one of short, sharp, and shockingly honest salvos of raw and abrasive music, and rabble-rousing lyrics that we can all get behind. Even their chosen name suggests that they have something to say about the right to affordable housing, again, an issue that has only gotten worse since punk’s heyday.

What we get with their latest EP, Four Songs is a near-fistful of songs that speak “truth to power” in the form of social awareness, street-level observation, and a cry of collective frustration wrapped in driving, powerful, fist-in-the-air, foot-on-the-monitor punk salvos. It’s raw and revelatory. It is thunderous and truthful. It is venting, volative and built on velocity and volume. It is aggressive and anthemic and awesome.

I worry that as the world becomes a darker place, as the gap between the haves and have-nots is increasing daily, that music has ceased engaging with the business of politics and protest. Well, at least I can sleep safe knowing that there is at least one band with sonic skin in the game.

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