There’s no point at which Teen Mortgage’s debut LP ‘Devil Ultrasonic Dream’ doesn’t feel like being inside a sweaty mosh pit. It’s an album that holds you in its embrace even as it kicks you in the face. This is pure punk from start to finish, distilled from garage and surf rock and thrown into a particle accelerator.
Title and lead track ‘Devil Ultrasonic Dream’ immediately lets you know what you’re in for with the album; short and hell-for-leather. It grabs you by the throat at 90 miles per hour. Don’t expect the grip to lessen much over the next 25 minutes. But if you want to find the heart of an album that is in part defined by its brevity, look to the shortest songs. ‘Ride’ and ‘Lose My Mind’ are frantic and furious with an undercurrent of alien guitar noises and chanted backing vocals. Both are driven by their choruses, hymns to the disabused and powerless working class. That’s the source of the explicitly political fury that is Teen Mortgage’s rocket fuel. Singles ‘Box’ and ‘Party’ showcase this rage.
“I don’t wanna be in no box no more” is the yelled refrain of ’Box’, led by its dirty, harmonic-fuelled riff. That box is both metaphorical and literal; Humans figuratively forced to be economic batteries, while also being materially trapped by the extortionate rents we pay for our tiny flats. ‘Box’ bounces along with a catchy energy that pushes at the edges of the claustrophobic titular box, determined to escape. Again, in ‘Party’s hook “I don’t wanna be part of the war machine / They got me forced to work when I’m born to party,” delivered with an almost uplifting rip-roaring energy. Of the two, ‘Party’ is the single that more fully represents the album’s style – relentless, a full-fisted punchiness that doesn’t let up.
‘Rip’ is full of brutalist angles, its lead riff syncopated and at odds with both the drums and vocals. It pulses with a discordant energy that never lets you sit at peace – a grinding, tearing energy. But there’s also an atmospheric side to the album that is felt in the wordless, floated chanting and vocals dripping with reverb that are found throughout. ‘Possessed’ starts ethereally, and the juxtaposition of floated atmosphere with raw energy in its chorus finds its echoes across the rest of ‘Devil Ultrasonic Dream’.
And it’s echoes that come to mind at the album’s centrepiece – and a personal standout – ‘Personal Hell’. The slowest song here, a short breath for air, led by a twisting guitar riff and an anthemic chorus. Sounding like a darkened Weezer from the bottom of a well, once you reach it, it’s hard to avoid those reverberations on either side of it, whether it be its atmospheric tone or that mournful darkness, keenly felt in its doomy bridge.
The two songs immediately following ‘Personal Hell’ and leading breathlessly into ‘Box’ create renewed vigour – ‘Disappear’, bookended by psychedelic reversed guitars, is led by a frenetic chord riff with only the tensest moments left to breath before crashing into ‘Control’, which embodies the echoes of the dark chord structures in the bridge of ‘Personal Hell’.
Teen Mortgage slow down again in album closer ‘I Don’t Wanna Know’, an ironic melancholy expression of deliberate ignorance. “I just close my eyes”, “trust me it will be fine”; these are the words of someone with their head stuck in the sand. The song circles around itself, beautifully going nowhere. A political depiction of the apolitical temptation that many will surely relate to.
It’s difficult to write about ‘Devil Ultrasonic Dream’ song by song because many of these are variations on a theme. Never stale or repetitive – this is an album written as an album, as a coherent sonic piece of work that beats you down and lifts you up in equal measure. It’s a brilliant punk album, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing less than a band who have honed their voice enough to be heard from hell.
WILL BRIGHT