Recommended Album: So Pitted – ‘Cloned’

It took eights years, some failure (and maybe some Failure?) in order for So Pitted to come into their own with their long-overdue album, Cloned. Back in 2016, they were a trio of promising noise rockers signed with the top of the mountain of indie labels, Sub Pop, for their assured and solid arrival of a debut, neo. Here, they proved their skill of loud, heavy alternative rock history as more than proficient, but maybe there could only be one band indebted to Steve Albini devotion which Sub Pop could afford to back from that point onward, with that honor going to Pissed Jeans. Fair, as it seems to have very much challenged the composition of the Seattle rock bastions from that point on for the better and more importantly, the more singularly weirder, with what we now hear of them today. Four brains now think up the decay of So Pitted for one thing, with Jagger Beato and Lauren Rodriguez joining original members Nathan Rodriguez and Liam Downey. The latter two switch off on lead vocals now as well, with modulations to them upping their mutant factor in their post-nuclear noise rock. Mixed in with ample sludge by the hand of early grunge scene pioneer Tad Doyle, the dozen tracks making up Cloned go to a warranted oversaturation point in handing it to humankind for all of its fuck ups and self-made disasters. Hard-loaded riffs and bass lines fill deep voids into whatever epicenter drums drill into Earth’s rotting core when highlighting menacing inspiration on “Muse” or the fast toxic chug of “Vodka Cran”. A rash of squelching synthesizers running through “Everything Sucks” and “Parasite” pushes So Pitted’s feral esotericism further, while absurdism gets weaponized in tongue-in-cheek fashion (see: the very Paul Banks-like annunciation of every lyric on “Interpol” suggesting a possible titular double entendre in theme and namesake of song and album title.) It’s an ugly mirror of a world that’s not getting any better. It’s wild because our current chaos necessitates it. It’s caustic because the acid tongue burns like so. More than anything, Cloned devours anything resembling any of those things as a means of evolving to survive.

Highlights: “Muse”, “Vodka Cran”, “Parasite”

So Pitted’s Cloned is available now on Youth Riot Records.

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