By A note from your humble Editor-in-Chief: MISERY WHIP are the kind of band that fellow MGRM contributor Chris Copland would traditionally be covering in great depth with his newsletter The Dredge, which I’m thrilled to tell you we’ve begun in 2024 to syndicate here on this very site! But since I got here first and am using my Bandcamp Pick this week to also plug a new column, let me be the one to sing MWII’s praises instead, and be sure to look out for more dispatches from The Dredge soon enough!
MISERY WHIP – MWII
Genre: Hardcore
Favorite Track: “Joke”
MISERY WHIP’s brand of hardcore is, admittedly, quite fashionable right now, and that’s a good thing. Artists like SPY, GEL, Zulu, and countless others have been getting snatched up by labels because of their ability to blend powerviolence riffs, D-beat rhythms, and crust punk anger, while authentically making them palatable for a rapidly growing generation of mosh pit-ready kids who have likely never heard Discharge or Anti-Cimex. It’s exciting—it feels like a bubble, but it’s exciting nonetheless. MISERY WHIP balance these varied musical components about as well as anyone I’ve heard in the last year or two, with vocalist Hayley Kafer gluing everything together with a stately, dead-eyed mix of wrath and end-of-rope desperation, howling “You’ve ruined it all, we can’t fix it,” on “DISCONTINUED,” or the singular, howling “Wake up!!!” on “VULTURES.” Kafer was pregnant during the recording of the EP, and knowing that brings an exciting new dimension to the music, capturing an essence of fight and hope and worry and anger that is necessary in our battle for a better future. Portland, Maine is one of my favorite cities in America, and knowing MISERY WHIP are out there melting faces is itself a calming notion. Let them melt your face over on Bandcamp.
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