How fucking ironic is it that Violent Soho decided to drop a record called Everything Is A-OK during a global pandemic? It’s as if they did that on purpose. Wait, did they?
While the world is currently going to shit (plus the fact that their native country of Australia was set ablaze earlier this year,) the four mates in Violent Soho are, well, A-OK. The sense of irony doesn’t escape the band on their fifth album, and first with Pure Noise Records (Bearings, Less Than Jake, The Warriors,) Everything Is A-OK. Originally the name was supposed to be about how social media is ruining us, but the COVID-19 outbreak just gives the name a whole new meaning. Everything’s not ok, and that’s ok for Violent Soho.
So to put it in simple terms: everything sucks, but you can try and find the positivity in anything if you face it head-on. That’s the moral for Everything Is A-OK.
The album has the band searching for a light in these dark times, and with that light they create some of the most polished, wonderful material in their discography. And don’t take my word for it, vocalist Luke Boerdam said, “We spent an entire day getting the guitar sounds right, so it’s probably the first time I’ve ever been completely happy with the guitar sounds.” Violent Soho kick it up to 11, pushing themselves to their limits and going beyond that.
Violent Soho’s grungy alt-rock vibes shine bright on the whole record, but they shine the brightest on songs like “Lying On The Floor,” which has a “Smells Like Teen Spirit”-esque intro, “Easy” with its heavy beginning riffs, the song that felt like it was taken from the 90s “Vacation Forever,” and “Slow Down Sonic, beginning with sludgy guitars before heading into acoustic strings and quiet distortion.
Overall, Everything Is A-OK became the soundtrack to our quarantine by mistake. While the anti-social media meanings are scattered throughout the ten tracks, it became rewritten due to the virus. Even though things are A-OK right now, it will be soon. Dark times are ahead, but this too shall pass.
Punk Goes Prenatt 