Photo by Josh Sisk

Coming of age in the Aughts, one thing was for sure: D.C. bands like Black Eyes and Q and Not U walked hard with their artsy noise-punk so that much hipper scenes like Brooklyn and Los Angeles could run with those ideas big time. Across two albums, the former five-piece ushered in the turn of the 9/11 era of a new millennium with an incomprehensible sound that hit hard and was definitively an acquired taste. Guitars that could dagger and crash through walls, a doubling up on drummers and bassists, free jazz brass attacks, all while shouts and screams grated across them. It was truly a moment when waving your freak flag in the pit was not just more than welcome, but actually pushing those hardcore boundaries we keep hearing about today even audibly further out.

The discomforts of the sound Black Eyes broke ground with returns on “Pestilence”. As the first single on the band’s return album 21 years in the making, Hostile Design, it makes total sense that in their recent reunion state, they’d commit to the hellscape of our current timeline in full. The listen begins by setting the scene of all the wrongs through Daniel Martin-McCormick and Hugh McElroy’s tongues twisted up political. Every line they lay down is laced like a powder keg, until eventually, there’s that spark that blows everything off course. “Let it rot in your keep, purify it with bleach,” goes one exclamation in its final moments. When it comes to burning everything down, Black Eyes are still doing it better — and freakier — than the rest.

Black Eyes’ Hostile Design will be released October 10th in Dischord Records.