It could be said that all music is mood music because who honestly puts on an album they aren’t in the mood for? We’ve all got go-to albums for our moods. Records we put on when we’re sad, when we want to relax, when we cook. Birth Control is the kind of album to listen to when you want to put your fist through your best friend’s face, when you’re driving home from a dead end job and seriously contemplate putting the pedal to the floor and running down every pedestrian in sight, when your frustration boils over and you want to rip that stupid fucking piece of wiring that won’t thread through the back of your entertainment center out and smash that cheap piece of shit from IKEA to dust.

Fight Amp’s newest album of acerbic, gritty and seriously pissed noise rock in the classic mold of Unsane presents a powerful and singular vision of scorn and violence. Since paring down from four members to a three piece after the release of Manners and Praise, the remaining members have narrowed their musical focus. Relentless and uncompromising, this shit just drips contempt. The tone they strike, and hold for the duration of the album, is bleak and pessimistic, with all the driving intensity of a bulldozer. They throw in doses of the Melvins (“Creepy Kicks”), early Nirvana (“Fly Trap”), some sludge-style riff tweaking (“Should’ve Worn Black”), and a downright nasty riff that wouldn’t be out of place on a High on Fire record (the instrumental “Goner”). The resulting cocktail is a brusque and corrosive kick to the head.

This is some great stuff when the mood to clobber strikes and has become my go-to disc for angry driving and, alternately and much more safely, racing games. Fight Amp are proudly and unapologetically flying the flag of uncompromising noise rock grime. Between Birth Control, with its fist first aggression and compassion-free frontal assault, Ladder Devils full length, the insane new album from the Catalyst, and the upcoming Kowloon Walled City, 2012 has turned in to quite a year for good noisy rock.

[Visit the band's website]

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