Birdcop

Birdcop doesn’t mess around. This is all out in your face hard driving fistful of broken glass music. Their demo (a single track featuring six songs distinguished by brief respites) starts hot and stays hot, bludgeoning the listener with distortion and screaming, and rarely lets up. When the guitars drop out halfway through the third track it’s a revelation: while Birdcop prioritizes power, their underlying allegiance to craft and melody provides a very necessary foundation. 

Music this aggressive asks a lot of the listener. The unrelenting vocals are delivered via a growling scream through each and every track. The music could easily lend itself to a number of interpretations – I could hear Mudhoney-esque drawly slacker vocals, fuzzed out mantras akin to Fu Manchu, or Illuminati Hotties’ punk-snark delivery. Birdcop opts for volume over melody, depending on rhythmic nuance rather than actual notes. This leaves all the heavy musical lifting to the instruments, though more often than not they try their best to meet the vocals in terms of energy. This music is at its best when the instrumentation distinguishes itself, focusing on melody and dynamics, and allowing the homogenous vocals to provide the dynamics, as in the bridge of the third and beginning of the fourth song.

This isn’t a genre I’m super versed in –to my ears, this aligns with punk emo pioneers Lifetime, though a little angrier and more beholden to the gutter. The point of this music is fist-in-the-air catharsis. Birdcop has the chops to start a mosh pit and the instincts to keep it inspired. You might catch a boot to the jaw, but you’ll deliver a few as well. That’s the price to pay for being alive in Birdcop’s world.