PARCH - Hell in These Eyes

Tired of all the cute fall posts littering your feed? Need something heavy and haunting to get you in the mood for Halloween? Well look no further than the new release by PARCH. New Jersey’s noise boys are back at it with another grinding EP entitled Hell in These Eyes, and it roars louder than a chainsaw in a slasher film.

Recorded in a live setting, Hell in These Eyes manages to stamp the chaotic essence of PARCH onto tape. Between my headphones is a band raging in a room, the cymbals denting as the drumsticks smash into them, the squeal of feedback through distortion pedals and blaring speakers. The vocals are throaty and furious and near impossible to pin down. Yet this is the charm of PARCH—tight performances that sound as unruly as a barfight—a charm Hell in These Eyes captures in all its frenetic glory.

The four songs that make up this EP are aggressively raw in all the right ways. “Foretold” ends so abruptly it sounds like an abandoned take. “Sunnydale” rides growling power chords and a headbanging beat, while “Alligator” dredges the waters with blast beats and mud-drenched bass. The lyrics on this record are so sarcastically nihilistic; “Clear” screams itself into existence with the line “Wake up every day with a gun to my head,” while the tape ends with devolving howls of “This town is a hole” over a collapsing band. The sonics of Hell in These Eyes are pure sludge, vicious wet death coughs of vitriol and reckless abandon.

Though less than ten minutes in length, Hell in These Eyes keeps me riled for hours. The music of PARCH hits like a shot of adrenaline, and leaves me jonesing for another fix as soon as the last song ends. Hell in These Eyes raises hell in the ears, so maybe hell ain’t such a bad place to be.

My Top Track: "Clear"

Hell in These Eyes is out on Wet Cassettes; you can also grab a copy off their Bandcamp page.

Parch - S/T

Music provides a massive range of emotional release for people. We listen to music to lift our spirits, to laugh, to cry. We vent our rage through music. We commiserate through it, we connect with it. And sometimes, we get crushed by it.

There are few feelings comparable to that of standing at a show and feeling the notes physically hit you as they vibrate through the air. This is noise rock we’re talking—music so loud even the amps are screaming, spitting sound so big it drowns out thought and emotion, wholly dominating your existence for a half hour.

Translating this experience to record is a very difficult matter for lots of noise-driven acts, but on their new self-titled EP, New Jersey’s Parch has no trouble capturing the enormity of their sound. The pounding drums nearly overload my speakers, the cymbals toppling over the booming kick and sharp snare. The guitars screech with fuzz and furor, thrashing chords challenging the overdriven bass in a race to the finish. The vocals are raw and raving, each syllable scraped off the throat and strained through a scratchy filter before it reaches the mic.

The sound of Parch is vicious and deliciously chaotic, everything I could ask for and more. “The Teeth” and “Pet Cemetery” both race along at hectic tempos, riding blast beats to their catastrophic end without breaking the one-minute mark. Yet on “Harsh Soil,” Parch take their time, stomping along like they’re on a drunken funeral march. Even the opening track “Barren Land” features hissing feedback and distorted vocal clips over a guitar melody that is somehow simultaneously gorgeous and gross.

Rampant with raw energy and attitude, Parch is a record without pretense—a pile of songs soaked in static and led by honest passion. Though this is undeniably a noisy record, the energy is infectious and fun, the disaffected shouting of the vocals as sincere as they are scary. But there is no shortage of darkness either—both “Knee Deep in Devils” and the closer “Mount Misery” create a disturbing atmosphere of fury and fear the likes of which most bands only dream of approaching. 

Creating an album that captures the bedlam and volume of a live show is no simple feat; doing justice to the songs in such a context is a far taller order. Yet with their self-titled EP, Parch show themselves to be clearly up to the task. Their short collection of raucous tunes are packed with ruthless riffs, ferocious vocals, and a whole lotta heavy. Parch is a record that has had me locked in for weeks now, and I have no doubt it’ll do the same to you.

My Top Track: "Harsh Soil"

You can find more from Parch, including your own copy of their S/T, on their Bandcamp page.