Brat – Social Grace | Album Review

Blast beats for bimbos - New Orleans deathgrinders Brat establish themselves with their debut LP Social Grace.

If there is something that we will never stop needing in the alternative scene is a band that does some good crossover, and Brat is delivering it with utter confidence. Social Grace is an album filled with all the best deathgrind and powerviolence influences, continuing on from what they have already shown us in their previous releases. The tempo switches in this record are smoother and the songs’ structure has definitely seen some elevation.

Brat, in some way, makes you want to use the term “Entombedcore” for them, which, as the name suggests, refers to bands that are fusing the more metallic side of hardcore with Scandinavian Death Metal and Crust. Regardless of their niche subgenre of extreme music, this band from New Orleans has been able to craft a ten-tracks album that is way more accessible than other standard grind productions, probably thanks to plenty of New York style hardcore breakdowns and thrash riffs, clearly made for the moshers.

Anyone who has seen this “bimboviolence” band live as of late, with their silly electro dance-off in the middle of the set, or seen their recent music videos will be able to detect that they have a very unique visual and aesthetic. However, this doesn’t seem to really reflect in their music. This dichotomy between how they portray themselves and what they actually write is clever and intentional. Liz Selfish knows what she’s doing here. Her distaste for humankind is extremely transparent through her guttural lyrics and she delivers them without holding back, not once.

The opening track ‘Ego Death’ sets the standards for breakdowns in this album very high; giving us a taste of how modern their sound is. ‘Hesitation Wound’, their lead single, is the perfect calling card to their intense and raw noise with restless and energetic drumming from Dustin Eagan and grinding and extra precise metal guitar riffs by Brenner Moate foreboding fuzzy bass by Ian Hennessey. After this track, the album slightly loses some of that NY hardcore style and leans more into powerviolence fury.

A notable stand out is ‘Rope Gang’. This chaotic track with an insane guitar picking main riff, is held together by some mind-blowing drumming as usual. If before this you were just grooving with it, now you’re awake.Another highlight is the second to last track ‘Sugar Bastard’. One unforgettable thrash riff ties together with an epic delivery by Liz here. The ending embodies all the doom feelings and suffering that they’ve been singing about so far. Until, finally, they’re welcoming you to a chaos that sucks you into a whirlwinding rotting world.  And, of course, the title track ‘Social Grace’ is the perfect conclusion for the  band that just presented us with some contemporary deathgrind  in a well packaged 20 minutes. 

Although not overly produced, this record is definitely thought through and it excels compared to their earlier EPs. Also, to be a grindcore band, the dynamic of their songs keeps the listener entertained and it doesn’t feel repetitive at all. If there can be one criticism, the vocals are so perfectly balanced with the rest of the instruments in this album, that it would be almost better if we could hear more of Liz. Although, surely this won’t be an issue we will encounter live.

Brat has surely shown us that they have the capacity to write some bangers and we can look forward to more in the future. It would be also interesting to see if they’ll keep their aesthetic and their music separated, or if we will be able to see some of that “bimbocore” sassiness making its way into the music.