This week's BREAKING SOUNDS feature record is the hard-boiled follow up 7" single on Criminal IQ Records by Pittsburgh, PA's notoriously named Kim Phuc. If you're already familiar with this band, who have the honor of being named after the famous girl in the Vietnam War photo figure, you'll know just how they caress an underlying dissonance that equally shocks and blinds anyone within earshot. With an unsettling bass line intro that instantly recreates the fear you felt inside the first time you heard that formidable doom on The Stooges debut album, Kim Phuc desecrates the air with the chilling and egregious tones created on the title track, "Wormwood Star" to great effect. Holding members of Brain Handle at the helm, they interweave teeth-gnashing post-punk abrasion with brutal intentions and deliver a crushing chop to the punk blueprint as they trade in aggression for a deep-seeded slow burn that goes in right for the throat.
Although according to the band's website, one of these songs may actually be about "shitting on Republican graves" and the other about "thinking yourself into a black hole," this still has enough negative energy and bad vibes to corrode those painful memories of past failures into one clean ball of concentrated hate. And if you find yourself waking up on the wrong side of the bed more often than not, it's records like this from Kim Phuc that may just equalize the chemicals in your soggy brain and stave off any murderous intentions you hold toward incompetent coworkers, corrupt landlords, and all the other wolves in sheep's clothing you have to endure on a daily basis. Pick up a copy of this voracious two-song single right HERE or from Florida's Dying, and breathe a little easier when the pressure subsides.
check out a live video clip of Kim Phuc performing the b-side to the new single "Freak Out The Squares" courtesy of pilotesseJ, right here...
