So Pitted – Neo

Album Review by Will Fitzpatrick | 02 Feb 2016
Album title: Neo
Artist: So Pitted
Label: Sub Pop
Release date: 19 Feb

Melodies are all well and good, but they’ll only get you so far. Sometimes all you wanna hear is something that’ll crush you into the ground. Step forward Seattle’s So Pitted: a trio for whom no riff is complete unless it fully articulates the sensation of stuffing one’s head in a blender while falling down a spiral staircase.

At times (Pay Attention To Me, Rot In Hell), their chief inspiration point seems to be Nirvana’s seething grind through Devo’s Turnaround, but their gleeful dedication to deafening scree also calls to mind both No Age and TAD’s 8-Way Santa; each staring longingly at the other before smashing themselves together, skull-first.

Naturally, it raises questions as to the wisdom of resurrecting grunge’s faux-nihilistic sense of bleak irony, but even if the price we have to pay is another generation of yarling, po-faced chancers, records as righteous as Neo are worth suffering for. [Will Fitzpatrick]

Playing Brudenell Games Room, Leeds on 8 Mar http://subpop.com/artists/so_pitted