Fresh Kills – Fresh Kills

Where do Fresh Kills come off acting like such snotty overeducated punks? It probably has something to do with The Nation of Ulysses, and the whole DC hardcore scene in general. Their self-titled second full length is a strange, raucous amalgam of mid to late-period hardcore and recent post-punk revival. In contemporary terms the Brooklyn-based five piece sound like Interpol all hopped up after doing a few lines of At the Drive-In cut with very early Jimmy Eat World and Foals.

Fresh Kills love of DC hardcore is obvious, and they fuse it with updated post-punk sounds with the precision and care of a Swiss watchmaker. Singer Zach Lipez’s lyrical nonchalance belies a well though out worldview, one he obligingly lays out for the listener on the opening track “Asleep Means No:” “In the absence of an interventionist God/ I believe in right and wrong.” Throughout the album, Lipez bellows and barks out meta-poetic shards of 21st century punk philosophy over the band’s roiling musical fits.

The band’s sound will seem well thought-out to fans of the genre, hand-picked from the best the hardcore/post-punk genre has to offer. As with most bands who can trace lineage to Joy Division, very little instrumentality is wasted, especially on bass where Mitchell Jordan does his best to live up to his influences.

“Asleep Means No” begins with a frenzy typical of bands like Rocket From the Crypt and Mission of Burma. As with most post-hardcore the flow gets stilted on the guitar breaks, but even that could be intentional. “I Know I Know” delves into more dance punk similar to Foals, but remains anchored in Fresh Kills mapped out genre mix.

“Enemies” and “I Quit Smoking” are slower tempo with a stronger post-punk presence, the latter featuring a particularly well-executed bassline from Jordan. “I Quit Smoking’s” musical pedigree resonates deeply, sounding like the theme song to a Paul Verhoven remake of The Breakfast Club if it was set in 1990 and featured 20-somethings. Lipez sings, “I said I want to be happy for you…I don’t want to be someone you got over/ I just want to be around when you come alive…I quit smoking to keep your scent on my sheets.”

“Revelations” has more Foals grooves with a spoken word bridge over hand claps. “Separation Tree” and “Caroline” fizz with manic post-punk delivery. On “Caroline” Lipez wants the listener to know that this woman Caroline has been through some shit, and he’s not going to take it anymore, “Through this sullen vicious world/ I will never let you down…you’re the only good thing in this world, oh Caroline.”

“Winners” is an anthemic mid-tempo exercise in post-hardcore abstract politics with a hint of Clarity-era Jimmy Eat World: “We are traitors/ collaborators…like cancer we’re winning/ it never goes out of fashion does it.”

Overall the album is a progression of the sometimes abrasive post-hardcore genre. All this intelligent design is respectable, but it can’t cover the fact that sometimes post-hardcore’s mania is untenable in the mind of almost any listener, and in the end the album needs more songs in the mood of “I Quit Smoking” for balance.

Lyrically, “Asleep Means No” and “Winners” are perfect bookends for this band’s brand of punk philosophy, just as “Fresh Kills” is the perfect name. The band got it from a landfill in NYC. By sheer coincidence on 9/11, confused and horrified newscasters had to repeat the name Fresh Kills over and over, because that’s where evacuees from the Twin Towers were being told to go. “Kills” is a corruption from the Dutch word for stream that’s used in many NYC place names. It’s no coincidence Fresh Kills chose to name themselves something that would provoke an immediate negative reaction but after close examination reveals challenging, innocuous roots.