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When I was much, much, much younger, I went to a talent show at a girlfriend’s high school. Most of the acts were musical, so they set up a stage in the gym rather than using the auditorium. About four or five of those bands were hardcore punk fronted by the same kid, and every song exploded in a sub-two-minute speed-punk rage blast.

I’m sharing this because I cannot be certain that kid isn’t in Iron Lung. Adapting // Crawling (Iron Lung Records) features eighteen tunes in just under twenty-one minutes. Two lasted less than thirty seconds, and another eight last under a minute (one clocks in at exactly one minute, go figure.)

The thirty-six seconds of “Adapting” open the album with one of the rare respites you get for the next third of an hour, all gentle drums and slow guitars.

Then, the assault begins. Like Bruce Banner, these guys are angry about everything. Paranoia, rage, depression, fear, anxiety, bleak, and at times visually precise, the lyrics (which you will need a lyric sheet to follow) mirror the present moment in our post-capitalist world. Our post-COVID world, too. The press kit says the album focuses on mental health, and that occupies significant lyrical real estate. However, references to a virus and other medical terms and procedures reveal deeper, more complicated traumas.

For whatever reason, “A Loving Act” – a languid three-and-a-half minutes – breaks the mold mid-album with a very Doom Metal stretch functioning as a kind of intermission. Then, “Purgatory Dust” resumes the bludgeoning.

Looking at it another way, Adapting // Crawling is a powerful nightmare of an absolutely worst-case scenario. The American health care system concept album ends with the eulogy of “Survived By. . .”  Again, a lyrics sheet will be necessary to follow the journey.

I’d love to have much more to share, but the vast majority of this album exists as blisteringly fast drums and shouting over super-fuzzy guitars (and it is only twenty minutes long.) Worth the listen, and maybe a buy from Bandcamp if you’re a fan of old-school Hardcore speed-punk. (Or any of the three genres I just smooshed together.)

Buy the album here:
https://orcd.co/wkbk9qj

8 / 10
LARRY ROGERS
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