Muskets - Violent Paradise


Ever since they formed in 2014, Muskets have faced the sad reality of being grunge when there's no such genre. Sure, comparison with Nirvana and Seether is unavoidable, they convincingly inhabit that sad, sloppy, sonic sink hole of Alt-Rock between Post-Punk and Shoegaze, but they're also from England, and that's not quite the kiss of death, more like the consolation hug of obscurity. They're never going to "make it," and that's actually a good thing.

Muskets are really, really good. I definitely like them, and they could quickly become your favorite band. And yet, I think we can all agree that if you give these guys any sort of prime-time radio play, they'll quickly get overplayed, burn out, and disappear into obscurity anyway. Of course I want more, I want to mainline them into my bloodstream through my earballs and die a slow, sugary, opioid induced coma death, metaphorically speaking.

I'll be blunt, what everybody calls "grunge," I hear as "heroin chic." It's a sound so steeped in depressive nihilism and isolationist self-sabotage that you either recoil in disgust or embrace the firework explosion of empathy flashing on the back of your eyelids. But, it's not a riddle you can solve, it's not a puzzle you can put back together, it's the sound of already too far gone. Back in the early 90s we could wrap it in a blanket of sarcasm and scream it at the world for the hope of change and a better life for future generations. Back then it had the novelty of showing mainstream society the tragic destruction it leaves in its wake. Now though, we can't pretend that makes a difference. 30 more years of the same unrelenting garbage and it makes no difference if it's piled up in the front yard or the back yard, everybody has their own personal pile and everyone else can see it towering above the rooftops, but we know there's no garbage truck coming to collect it, and we also know there's no room at the landfill even if it did. 

The machine, I'm afraid, produces only wafer thin mints, and it's human captives have no choice but to coax us into eating just one more until we finally explode all over the dining room. Life is, as Muskets so eloquently express it, a Violent Paradise.

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