The DIY emo and punk communities are a rabbit hole, to say the very least. There are so many limbs and nerve endings stemming from its roots at this point, hyper-striated by Internet culture on top of it, that looking at its exploded diagram can be overwhelming. But not if you’re Will Green. The nomadic songwriter has found a strange comfort within the scene’s microdoses of creative chaos through his one-person punk outlet, Full Blown Meltdown, in recent years, and with his debut album, Mollify, he’s able to put it all together in one of the most synthesized screaming transmissions from its current state. Some people are simply built for this shit, and in Green’s case, he uses every setback in life to fuel his art’s purpose, be it his experiences as a reformed metalcore guitarist in a past life that ultimately left him jaded about industry mechanics, heavier matter that had him putting his instrument on the shelf for years, or the aged wisdom in realizing that the hits won’t stop coming even when you’ve already had more than your fair fix of bad days for a lifetime. In a sickening, celebratory way, Mollify celebrates that, because really, what else are you going to fucking do? If the world outside is intent on breaking you, your bet is to coerce the brain into out-maneuvering the daily struggle at its own game. The listen takes the challenge to task with Green being a mad man plugged into a stack of PUP and Rosenstock LPs and Third Eye Blind and Harvey Danger CDs spinning at 2x speed, Wi-Fi beaming glass beach into his veins, all the while balancing the weight of the world on a squat rack, pushing his every toxic thought fully to the limit as a means to out-survive them. While the surface may show signs of cracking, he doesn’t fully shatter. Credit a meticulous understanding of the DIY multiverse in navigating each quandary, as Green and producer ERGOtheEGO just barely dodging panic attacks through cherub punk-pop anthems, strummy emo shouting loudly from the bedroom, solving long and exhaustedly for x in the sigs, and the occasional chiptune stack overflow with a precision that compacts the listen’s anxious intensity into a fail-proof design. The pessimism Full Blown Meltdown indulges to critical mass has never felt more like a sick form of relief as it does here on Mollify.

Highlights: “Nothing Matters Anyway”, “Kick It”, “No One Cares”

Full Blown Meltdown’s Mollify is available now.

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