A quick glance at the résumés of Hash Redactor’s members might seed certain expectations. The band is fronted by guitarist Alec McIntyre of Ex-Cult, with NOTS rhythm warriors Meredith Lones on bass and Charlotte Watson on drums, and rounded off by George Williford on second guitar. But their debut full-length dives into territory that feels distinctly untethered from their lineage and era. Drecksound is a clattering, shambolic oasis in the sleek digital desert of the late twenty-teens. Perhaps both because and in spite of the alienation that typifies the glut of rock music at the end of this god-damned decade, these twelve songs deliver a pointed social criticism, more cathartic than suffocating, while championing a nihilism that greets the abyss by laughing mockingly in its face. The chorus to the incendiary “Step 2: Success” is sneered, not sung, “It’s a long con job and you just got it wrong / banned from the world.” McIntyre’s lyrics present a puckish fascination with humankind’s rake-stepping self destruction. He’s a merry prankster, but more in the mold of a jackbooted Monty Python character than a Ken Kesey acid casualty.
