Iron Lung

Reviews

Iron Lung Adapting // Crawling EP

Seattle’s long-running powerviolence duo IRON LUNG have recently returned with their first full-length album since 2013’s White Glove Test. This Adapting // Crawling promo 45 offers one of the album’s standouts and the partially hidden title track. Side A delivers a grim three-part sequence—“Purgatory Dust,” “Virus,” and “Purgatory Dust (Finale)”—channeling the chaos of public health disasters and anti-science backlash, pulled from both the COVID era and the polio vaccine fights of the 1950s. Side B is the full version of “Adapting // Crawling,” a broken sound collage that slowly mutates into a crawling dirge. IRON LUNG remains as bleak and gripping as ever, holding a mirror to the damage we do to ourselves. As they write in the liner notes: “Human nature is insane. I’m surprised we’ve lived this long.” Same.

Iron Lung Adapting // Crawling LP

From the always surgically noisy Iron Lung catalog comes IRON LUNG, a band that slices with a scalpel instead of strumming. Hardcore that’s angular, rhythmically unstable, and constantly rearranging itself. Imagine NEON BLONDE, DAZZLING KILLMEN, or maybe RAKTA on steroids. Bizarre post-hardcore with a lab coat and clenched fists. Demands attention, but it’s worth every anxious pulse.

Iron Lung Mental Distancing flexi EP

Three-song flexi that was culled from material the band recorded before the pandemic began. Okay, it’s IRON LUNG. I knew it was going to be good, but it’s really fucking good. “The Psychology of Quarantine” (how’s that for a pre-COVID omen, Jesus) opens the EP with a noisy soundscape and then delivers the absolutely pummeling guitar/drums powerviolence we know and love. The lyrics, “Their power / Fueled by depression / Granted access first to the mind / And then to its declining vessel / During crisis there is insatiable hunger / And an endless food source” encapsulates the chaos, confusion, and downward cultural spiral of the last two years in a 45-second invective. “Everything is a Void” is another grenade blast that has a stuttering, glitched-out guitar phrase before the blasting begins. “Our brains know what sickness tastes like,” indeed. The third track, “Only Human,” is a RUDIMENTARY PENI cover, and I was excited to hear what IRON LUNG would do with the original’s rolling drum cadence. My expectations were dashed, reconfigured, and handed back to me in a stunning way—they go industrial-influenced hardcore like a mix of GODFLESH-style booming low-end noise-bass and the filthiness of PIG HEART TRANSPLANT. It’s nasty and unique in the best way a punk cover can be. Even the best powerviolence records can run together a bit because of the fast blur of songs, but IRON LUNG, as usual, makes every track an innovative, distinct, unnerving experience. Can a stopgap, album-teasing flexi be one of the best punk releases of the year? Essential listening.

Iron Lung Caspar Weinberger’s on Fire EP

This sometimes self-consciously bizarre EP uses a funny variant on a rap style on “Gödel Escher Bach: The Eternal Golden Rap,” while the two songs on the flip use a trebly synth (played quickly and seemingly at random) to underscore some similarly humorous lyrics. Strange, and basically okay.