Feral Coast. Scrunchies

Feral Coast starts with the song 'The Houseplant'. It sounds as if I recorded a cassette tape of the album in 1977, put the cassette and player in the attic over 30 years ago, where I found them in 2022, connected the player and put the tape in. As you can imagine it all sounds like shit, with a lot of tones, highs and lows, simply gone, hidden behind a layer of dust. After cleaning the player's 'heads' with pure alcohol on the tip of a swab, the sounds becomes considerably better, for a cassette tape and player from 1977. As this is what the rest of the album sounds like. Feral Coast is all about energy, power and some anger. Not perfect recording.

I had forgotten about the regular cleaning, preventing the cassette player "eating" the tape, until I thought of the comparison just now. Feral Coast brought it all back. No, I'm not nostalgic for winding the tape back in with pencil or Bic pen. I am enthusiastic about Scrunchies' album. Having written on two singles already this year, this may not come as a surprise.

With Feral Coast Scrunchies have released their inner beasts alright. This is punk music as punk comes. No back in the head thoughts about scoring a major hit. Let alone minding the recording quality. What you hear is what you get. Studio meters flying into the red or deep red, while the musicians give it their all, demanding the best and better performance of the loudness on their amps.

Scrunchies is a trio from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Laura Larson, sings and plays guitar, Danielle Cusack drums and does background vocals and newest member Matt Castore plays bass. Together they cook up a storm, where enthusiasm trumps playing to a 100% perfection. At the same time Scrunchies shows that it can play. From super punk anthems to letting a song totally fall apart in a sea of noise. It all comes by.

Promo photo: Nanne Sonvold

When all is said and done tough, underneath all that noise are songs. I can imagine playing some of them at a campfire on an acoustic. Not that this would make a lot of sense, for the song or the listeners, as the essence would be totally gone of what Scrunchies stand for: energy and venting some anger here and there. The message I want to convey is that Scrunches presents good songs. They're just played loud and not to forget wild and exciting.

The two best selling punkrock bands of the past nearly 30 years now, Green Day and The Offspring, have set a sort of standard. You can find traces of their music on Feral Coast. Scrunchies decided to put more emphasis on the first word of the title and that comes across. Listen to the song 'Absolute Maximum' and you not only know what I mean, it all falls together here. The huge riff, the noise in general, the wildness and a little anger and excitement. This song deserves a huge crowd at a huge festival wanting to totally party.

I can imagine that Feral Coast is too much noise for most people. It's their loss, as this is the real thing alright. Let's party like it's 1977, folks.

Wout de Natris