Warped Speed by Cars Get Crushed

For fans of Unwound, Jawbreaker, Rites of Spring, the recent wave of archival records and re-releases from the 90s post hardcore scene, and that alienating feeling of noticing the ongoing apocalypse a couple decades before everyone else, Warped Speed by Cars Get Crushed transports us back to a scene from thirty years ago whose relevance only continues to grow in today’s experimental rock scene. Hallmark warmly dissonant guitar chords and clean, expressive vocals immediately announce the album’s historical context, both elements we see in an increasingly broad array of genres today. However, a handful of deviations really let this record stand out among its contemporaries, including a tendency towards cyclical riffing which gestures in the directions of krautrock and post rock, lending this record a greater overall sense of scale than a verse-chorus veneer may suggest. As more examples like this surface from that ever-influential scene, our fascination grows with a subculture which seemingly predicted digital age atomization and its resulting nihilism, leaving us to today apply its sounds to a world which has finally caught up to its emotions.