Review: Tiger Helicide - The River Squid (LP)

    The year is 2025. The state of punk is in a weird place, reminiscent of some sort of inverted, Bizarro reality: every conservative ideal 2allied so arduously against during the Reagan era has infected the country 10,000 fold, but many punks of that era have swallowed the MAGA Kool-Aid and have fallen victim to the same system they once decried. Despite this, there are some caveats to living in the mirror world. For one thing, Tiger Hellicide are good now. 

    The band's latest offering, The River Squid, feels like the culmination of decades of sprawling escapades into experimentation with the depths of dissonance cataclysmically coming to fruition, This record, quite simply, kicks ass. In the most cathartic, lived-in, gritty, real life, authentic way, portraying the suffering wrought by the mundanity of middle-of-nowhere existence that only the most daring, non-pretentious, working class post-punk can. Tiger Hellicide have transcended their mortal form and taken up the mantle of The Fall, Pere Ubu, Alternative TV, The Pop Group, and other jagged and obscure record-store-employee darlings. 

    The single, "Easy Machine", is the most blunt, brutal, biting display of wit and wicked riffage that the band has in store on ....Squid. Immediately following is a joke song about the incest in Star Wars that's accompanied by the most frenzied, frantic playing on the record, just to show you the TH guys haven't lost touch with where they came from. The longer tracks here truly justify their length by showcasing the fierce, enrapturing grooves and textures this band can effortlessly cast like adept wizards from a bubbling cauldron of fuzz. The lyrics are a dazzling highlight throughout, their frustrated, existential poeticism gives Adam many fascinating characters to play that he embodies with great care and soul-gripping surety. The ending dirge, "Dueling Jesses" serves up a swirling, meditative miasma in which to simmer and stew in the explosion of extremity just experienced. This is a seminal post-punk record of our times, and one of the best things ever made in Gadsden, Alabama by a country mile. The River Squid is torrential and winding, and if you can ride the whitewater rampage, you'll be in for the time of your life 


-Corinna Cybele


The River Squid on Bandcamp

The River Squid on Spotify

The River Squid on Apple Music

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