Hating Music Forever

Fake Dust are a ripping grindcore band out of the PNW that shot to prominence in the extreme music scene this year with the release of their debut album last month, May 16. The demos they’ve put out in the last few years were both excellent, but to make the leap from three to seven minutes of music to twenty minutes is pretty major when the songs are so short. The members of Fake Dust had been tearing it down for years (over a decade?) before that in other bands, notably their drummer who has been in a ton of bands – no surprise there, he’s a mega talent and drummers are always in demand – and EZ who was in an epic powerviolence band called Family Vacation. I had the pleasure to play a show with Family Vacation in 2023 in the Disgraceland basement, and though I didn’t know it then, the first of the two Fake Dust demos was already out, the momentum already building for this breakthrough debut. Grindcore and powerviolence are outrageously affective genres, but with the pace and tone of the music it can sometimes be best enjoyed in moderate doses. I’m pleased to say Fake Dust never gets to that point, and while the vocals are great, the extent to which this holds your attention rests totally on the manic rhythm section. The drum sound is great, and the blasts all feel equally earned, never overextending or desperate for attention. There’s really no weak moment, and twenty minutes of good music isn’t such a high standard for an album but the number of grindcore bands operating right now capable of such a feat can be counted on maybe two hands. I’d say Little Bottle (Public Transportation Pt. 2) is my favorite of the shorter tracks, and among the longer tracks I think the final song Paranoid Epiphany is my favorite, with some praise due to the ambiance at the end of the song before, Envisaging Psychosomatic Operations, which is a perfectly brief respite from the onslaught before they put the final nails in the coffin.

I’m pissed off though. They were here on my birthday and I missed it. I would have loved to say hi.

This record gets four and a half stars.