Screaming Fist Santa Plaga EP
The first offering in several years from Oakland’s SCREAMING FIST. They play the kind of ripping hardcore punk that you’d expect from a band composed of members of several veteran bands. Santa Plaga translates to “Holy Plague,” and most of the lyrics here are political in nature. It’s got killer riffs, Spanish vocals that command your attention, and a drummer who is hellbent on stealing all of that attention! I just love it when a drummer just dominates a record, and that’s precisely what we have here. Take the second track “Gotas,” for example: it’s one-and-a-half minutes of fury led off with a repeating snare drum roll that morphs over time into precision drum fills and cymbal crashes. It all happens so fast that it’s almost over before you can wrap your head around it. Production-wise, it’s more polished than their 2019 debut, and the fidelity serves as a vehicle to deliver a sonic ass-beating. I’d like to hear these songs a little less polished, but that’s more of a curiosity than a criticism. It’s not easy to come off this aggressive while being so melodic, but they do it very well. I bet they rip live.
