Photo by Murphy Gerrasch

If it bleeds, it leads, and that applies as more than just a journalistic cliché on Ekko Astral’s “horseglue”. As the first new music from the D.C. punks since releasing one of last year’s standouts of dark matter post-punk albums, Pink Balloons, there’s intensely more friction to be heard here within their squalor — a promising development since the band became just the trio of frontwoman and bassist Jael Holzman, guitarist Liam Hughes, and drummer Miri Tyler in the time since. They’re no doubt reeling in the noise from our current timeline’s endless chaos and dystopian downward spiral, too. For Holzman, her vantage point as a reporter in Congress in 2024 gave her a too close for comfort view of the atrocities playing out live. “Why am I / So close to genocide?,” she wonders over raked guitars and a pounding resonance that creeps up in volume. “Free for all / Trial balloon / I’m floating / We all float / Drone bomb you.” If you want to make sure the story is seen and heard, sometimes it takes getting extra loud…

Directed by: Jael Holzman & John Lee

Ekko Astral’s “horseglue” single is available now on Topshelf Records.