Death Wish Kids – “There’s Nothing In School They Can’t Teach You On The Streets” (Hopscotch Records)

I’m a huge fan of Andrea Zollo and Derek Fudesco’s bands (The completely forgotten Pretty Girls Make Graves and The Hookers) so enjoying the band Death Wish Kids is a no-brainer. The band wasn’t around for long enough to do more than a demo and this ep, but their sound was so brash and fast that I’m not surprised. It’s definitely closer to their formative years in The Hookers than it is to Pretty Girls Make Graves. The Death Wish Kids record starts out with the undeniably harsh “A.A.”, a song that’s heavy enough and contains enough guitar feedback to be more popular in the 2013’s hip-to-be-noisy scene than in any 90’s punk scene. The second track, “Hood”, is a one minute buzz saw guitar song with an unfortunate minor-bass riff. No Song on this record is longer than a minute and a half, a fact that works very well because the painful guitar sound and tremble-heavy cymbals force your ears to beg for a break. I think every song might start out with fast guitar followed by the rest of the band coming in (or in the case of the song “Lucky”, guitar followed by vocals), which makes the urgency of the record much more noticeable. You know what’s coming next, but it’s still exciting when it breaks through. Andrea Zollo’s vocals on this record are incredibly painful sounding. I imagine her forcing every track into the red and then not bothering with a second take on any of them. It’s a perfect fit for the music.
There are parts of this record that almost sound like Nine Shocks (specifically the main riff of “Outsider”) but there are still songs that really do a good job of telling the listener when this record was made. It’s not a completely unique record, but considering what the members of the band went on to do, it’s absolutely worth tracking down. Plus you get a Vibrators’ cover!

The fact that these two were able to make so many records together, and cover such a broad spectrum of music while still having a cohesive sound is what draws me to them. It doesn’t hurt that two members of the band (including Fudesco) went on to be in Murder City Devils, a band that “borrowed” the last track on this ep.