Band:	Brat
Album:	Social Grace
Style:	Grindcore
Release date:	March 15, 2024
A review by:	Auntie Sahar

01. Ego Death
02. Hesitation Wound
03. Slow Heat
04. Truncheon
05. Human Offense
06. Rope Drag
07. Blood Diamond
08. Snifter
09. Sugar Bastard
10. Social Grace

In an increasingly over saturated and largely uninspired world of grindcore, striking out as distinct isn’t always a matter of how original your sound is. Sometimes it comes down to just how hard you can hit..

Even while their sound, by grind standards, may not be overly original, Brat, a four piece outfit hailing from New Orleans, immediately draw attention for two main points of difference from most other bands in the scene. First, it’s a frontwoman we’re dealing with here, none other than the charismatic Liz Selfish, an unquestionable Queen of growls, snarls, and those delicious, more HxC – esque yelling chants. If you didn’t know any better, and were to jam their music without looking at any lineup details or official pics, you’d be forgiven for assuming those vocals aren’t coming from a lady. Secondly, Brat have a pretty amusing way of marketing themselves, dubbing their style “Bimbocore,” and fittingly selling merch with a particular fondness for pink and black patterns, as well as incorporating pop songs within their sets during live performances.

Brat played around a bit with various Singles and EPs before finally dropping Social Grace this year, their first proper LP. Essentially, we can look at this as a more refined, extended, and slightly amped up version of the earlier releases like Grime Boss, Mean Is What We Aim For, etc. The songwriting isn’t noticeably different, but the sound quality itself has definitely improved. The jamz alternate pleasantly between uptempo raging and some more downtempo, heavy riffage plodding, often within the same track. Liz’s snarls and roars top everything off, and the slower moments especially give the music a bit of a powerviolence feel too, conjuring thoughts of bands from the heyday of that style such as Weekend Nachos, Magrudergrind, Maruta, etc.

One of (if not) the most enjoyable features of the album is definitely the fact that each instrument here receives a pretty impressive balance in the mixing. If one would complain for a lack of originality, one certainly can’t find fault with the production. The drumming of Dustin Eagan has a frantic sense of urgency to it, and he can always be heard nice and crisp under the rumbles and razor assault of the drum and bass (“Human Offense” is a particularly good performance). Bassist Ian Hennessey is almost never buried in the mix; on the contrary, he’s perfectly audible and even gets a few moments here and there where Brenner Moate falls back on guitar to allow him and Dustin to shine in the rhythm section. Point blank? These four are all some pretty talented musos, so much so that they all know better than to ever try to outshine each other, and on Social Grace they achieve a pretty commendable synthesis and balance.

There’s not much else to say than that, folks, but in a lot of ways there doesn’t need to be. An excellent way for Brat to finally bust out with their debut LP, Social Grace is easily one of the highlight “you don’t have to be original to be a good band” – type albums from this year. Brat don’t need to be going off the rails with their grind a la Antigama, Chepang, or Psudoko. That’s what we have those bands for. Here all they want to do is provide 21 minutes of banging, groovy grind numbers, rep their Bimbocore trademark, and provide some pretty suitable drinking music. And they do a damn fine job at it.

“Social Grace,” so you are expected to wear a suit and tie while listening, yes.