“What’s the point when things always stay the same?,” blunt-ends Chris Natividad’s ponderings on Forever standout, “Something Different”. It’s safe to say that the Marbled Eye frontman and guitarist has taken all that is doom and gloom in our present hellscape, and is allowing it to run rampant in every vein and nerve ending throbbing out the band’s limbs on their new EP. Then again, these times were made for these absolute bleakest of existential thoughts, and from the sounds of it, the Oakland post-punks are at their sharpest edge because of it.

Two years removed from their scene-stealing sophomore return, Read the Air, a greater foci on those darker corners of our new normal — alongside Natividad beginning to lean down his own prolific creative pursuits as of late between just this and Blue Zero — have in turn emboldened the band’s positives across these six tracks. In spite of the drab nimbostratus clouds veiling over it all (choice goth-minded lyricism: “Counting down the days until you’re all that’s left” in the steely vigor of “Stubborn Mind”, “A negative outlook is on the rise” on the roiling rising tide of “Negative Outlook”,) Natividad alongside guitarist Michael Lucero, bassist Ronnie Portugal, and drummer Alex Shen smash prototypical post-punk clichés with stabbing riffs and glass-sharp jagged rhythms. It’s an overdue exorcism not just for the genre, but in thought violence for the times.

Highlights: “Something’s Different”, “Stubborn Mind”, “Negative Outlook”,

Marbled Eye’s Forever is available now on Digital Regress.

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