Expectations can be a particularly tricky thing, and they often set an object or an idea up for disappointment.
Expectations can be a particularly tricky thing, and they often set an object or an idea up for disappointment. Far more rarely, though, a lowered expectation can pave the way for a pleasant surprise (a lesson conveyed to me in my youth went something like “anticipate the worst and you’ll never be disappointed” – harder to implement than it is to repeat aloud). Things come and go and the way we preconceive of them can either taint or improve them. So whether it’s fried okra or the new Hoax album, I’m happy to say I was wrong–that the object at hand is actually pretty good.
My own unfair judgment of Hoax assumed guilt by association. A few records out on Youth Attack (of late, a bastion of many things fleeting and superficial in regards to the fringes of hardcore punk), a good deal of internet hype, the sort of reputation for a crazy live show that inspires some question of credibility in anybody who’s been around the block a few times (in 2013, when some derivative of hardcore is readily available in every mall in America, most people making a public facade of their instability are putting on a show). That their new album was packaged with excessive amounts of art from over a dozen artists reinforced this idea of their music as being style over substance.
But was I ever wrong. Sure the presentation is fancy, but like Grant Achatz making a chicken fried steak, no amount of polished experimental veneer can change the fact that the album is a bare-bones, visceral blast of seething aggression that isn’t remotely as pretentious as it might seem to an outward observer. Set aside the emphasis on the artistic side of things. Ignore the intro provided by power electronics phenom Pharmakon (though it, in and of itself, isn’t bad at all – just like her own albums). Instead focus on the songs themselves, each one a sequence of low-end pummeling riffs that recall a great deal of hardcore from as many different backgrounds. It’s not hard to imagine Hoax in Boston circa ’82, drawing Xs on their heads to distinguish each other when brawling with punks from New York. It’s not hard to imagine them in Memphis circa the late 90s, borrowing Bastard albums from His Hero Is Gone’s record collection and cranking out something a little more straightforward than their crusty contemporaries offered before packing it in and moving to Portland. It’s not hard to imagine them as they are, four Western Massachusetts denizens that distill much of the region’s recent hardcore history into something far more base and ugly.
Each song present on this album finds itself permeated to the center of its being with undiluted disgust and rage, often self-directed, that places it in the realm of pure id music. Not that the band is dumb at all, but there’s little cerebral about the songs themselves, and this emphasis on all things visceral saves the album. It may sound contrived on paper, it may even sound a little bit so on record, but when the singer shouts “BREAKDOWN!” before the band launches into a breakdown, there’s a giddily nihilistic appeal that’s hard to deny. From the one-two drumbeats to the gnarled tangle of guitars, the overall sound is so ugly and (in the best possible sense of the word) ignorant sounding that it should make anybody with a pulse want to destroy whatever’s within arm’s reach (again, in the most desirable possible way).
Cliché though it may be, when it comes to an album like Hoax’s, it’s worth considering the old axiom regarding books, covers, and judgment thereof. Characterized by a near-violent lack of pretense, swathed in arty clothing, the stark duality of the manner in which the band presents themselves to the world might be off-putting. However, the music itself is anything but. In the best way possible, their songs run straight down hardcore’s middle road, demonstrating that, though there’s little in the way of variation from some standard genre moves, the seething, desperate rage that acts as the album’s baseline can still provide fertile soil in which to harvest some of the most bracing, intense work the style presently offers.
