ALBUM REVIEW: Hygiene – Drug Church

Long time DRUG CHURCH devotees know they are not a hard band to love. Quietly consistent, experimental but not in disarray, the Albany quintet exude strident confidence with their vanguard approach to melodic hardcore, tying in both garage punk subtleties and ballad-pop textures to form a heaving wall of sound that aims to stir up movement and propel wayward gig-goers towards their stage. Hygiene is a monument of this, and DRUG CHURCH’s most important work to date.

As ever, this record sees frontman Patrick Kindlon presenting his blunt and off-kilter musings on the modern condition, with Million Miles Of Fun attacking doom scrolling and unrelenting news cycles, and closer Athlete On Bench providing a window into parental disappointment. The spunky anthemic cadence of the album evokes comparisons to Michigan/Ohio’s CITIZEN, with Kindlon leaning on cleaner vocals to deliver the more relatable passages, occasionally rising to frustration, and increasing his zeal through distortion on the throbbing Plucked.

Detective Lieutenant could be played as the titles roll over a late 90s coming-of-age flick, seizing colossal choruses (“We won’t toss away what we love”) and sprechgesang verses to full effect, using the full range of Kindlon’s coarse, punchy pipes. There are also times where Hygiene veers into the chaotic, revealing its hardcore roots on the opening chords to Tiresome and the riotous pre-chorus to recent single Premium Offer.

DRUG CHURCH have taken inventory of everything 2018’s Cheer did right. Continuing with the heavily resonating themes of ‘struggles of adulthood’, they’ve doubled the power of the choruses, and interspersed less sardonic lines with more outright cynical and fatalist themes that hit harder in a post-pandemic landscape. This record is certainly preserved in the pandemic (when it was written), but has themes accessible enough that they apply to common modern misfortunes that feel all too applicable to the listener.

Hygiene captures DRUG CHURCH embracing vulnerability over comedy, pathos over ego and boring old reality over the hyper-saturated world of digital consumption. A curious triumph and antidote to the blanket 21st century daze.

Rating: 8/10

Hygiene is out now via Pure Noise Records.

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