Album Review: YPLL by Retox

Formed in 2010, Retox are one of the latest violent outlets for Justin Pearson, founding member of the Locust and Three One G Records. Following their 2011 album, Ugly Animals, Retox's sophomore effort, YPLL, is a much more finely carved and polished version of their earlier musical assault, falling somewhere between hardcore punk, powerviolence and sci-fi surf. Tearing through 12 tracks in 22 minutes, YPLL is lean and vicious, a cataclysmic collision of elements, as Pearson's spazz-out, smoldering vocals crash against Michael Crain's guitars and Thor Dickey's tense, throbbing bass.

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Though it doesn't have the layer of grime that their albums for Ipecac had, YPLL shows that polishing up their sound isn't enough to diminish Retox's intensity. A longtime purveyor of frenzied music, Justin Pearson shows he's still not interested in wasting anyone's time, delivering just over 20 minutes of smash-and-grab noise rock whose relentlessness is matched only by its seething sense of frustration and discontent. Always moving at full speed, YPLL creates a sense of anxious tension that, were it a longer album, would be exhausting.

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In the video for ‘Mature Science’ the second track on this, Retox’s sophomore album, they slit the throat of a KKK Klansman. You got that? This is not a band who are here to fuck about - All Time Low they ain’t. Indeed, from second one of ‘YPLL’ it becomes apparent that the San Diego quartet are as focused as they have ever been as their scintillating no-frills punk swirls around the listener in a miasma of rage and frustration and middle-finger-up attitude.Sure, Retox blur the line of punk, hardcore, metal, thrash and the surrounding sphere of genres but so much more than that, they are the musical embodiment of a nihilistic and genuinely dark manifesto.

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