Review by Paul D Houston
Wails new ep "Killer Wails" is a gloriously compact 4 song triumph. Their sound is amorphous as fuck. In these four new songs, I am hearing shades of No Wave, Post-Rock, Punk, and that jangly noise stuff Sonic Youth made their reputation on. Which is all very awesome to me, who's a fan of all that kind of stuff. Plus, the production on these four songs is top-notch. Its a lot cleaner than their last effort, which had the noise dial turned up a little higher. But dont take that as a knock. These songs, while a little cleaner, are loud and powerful and full of everything I could ever want in a 4 song punk-no wave-post-rock ep.
The energy is what I've really been attracted to with the Wails sound. Yeah, theres a lot of screaming in the vocals and yeah the guitars are full of buzz and the drums are non-stop, but what they've been able to create all together, is really something so very interesting. It's not just, lets yell into the microphone and pound on the drums and play a few power chords - This is really fresh shit, even though it fits firmly in a sort of punk/no wave kind of thing, which typing out now, seems dated...?! Anyway, I dig this band a fucking lot. And with live music starting up again, I can imagine Wails being one of those high energy, fuck yeah gotta see kind of bands.
Check out the second song, "Louder" off the new ep.
While I want to say its probably my favorite, Songs 1, 3 and 4 are also fucking hot as fuck.
Get this ep if you like music.