Sticking a fork into the circuitry of the genre The Death Set turbocharge every track with an electricity that fizzles through the speaker to leave your head smoking and your hair standing on end.
Pop punk is supposed to be a genre that takes the ruthless aggression and frenzied energy of punk and channels it into something altogether just a little more playful.
Sadly the genre has lost its way with the majority of bands claiming the moniker ultimately making music that sounds like an off-brand discount bin Blink 182 clone.
The Death Set is a different beast altogether. It’s almost a genre of its own with a poetic and irreverent punk mantra that they scribe in blood on vomit on the walls with ‘Set For Death‘.
It crackles onto the stereo with a fuzzed out distortion that instantly prickles against the hairs in your inner ear. The drums pound relentless while the guitars growl.
The vocals keep the distortion but still manage to come out crisp and clear due to the ferocity and passion that drives them. You can almost hear the spittle dripping down the studio room windows.
The pre chorus that leads into the first explosive chant of the incredibly hooky mantra of the band is arguably even more exciting than the chorus itself. The fluctuating melodic line on “but it doesn’t really matter, cause we’re all in this together” is possibly my favourite part.
Shout out to “I’ve got vomit for breakfast” for also being one of my favourite lyric lines of all time.
This is the kind of track that revitalises your love for the genre. Lyrically it’s a lot deeper than it may at first appear and the morbid beauty in embracing our own fragile mortality makes the reflection on the idiocy of our youth all the more potent.
Check out the music video which perfectly captures the band’s mix of playful and punk.
Words by Matt Miles
