Die Spitz “the best new band in the world”, and on the evidence of this album it’s difficult to argue. “Something To Consume” sounds like a record from four women who’ve grown up with brilliantly compiled playlists, rather than genre restrictions, and they’re happy to defiantly mix metal, grunge and snarling punk savagery as if it were the most natural thing in the world, all while swapping instruments willy-nilly. Never has fury sounded like so much fun.
“‘Something To Consume’ darts between styles with brutish energy and a sense of anarchic fun. At times, it feels like you’re a teenager discovering synapse-fizzing sounds all over again as they pinwheel between punk, shoegaze and classic rock.”
Die Spitz are rad as hell. Look no further than their resume: The punk foursome have opened for (and earned big ups from) bands like OFF!, Amyl and the Sniffers, Viagra Boys, and Sleater-Kinney. Any questions? “Something to Consume“, their debut full-length, arrives via Third Man Records and sees the 22-year-old Austinites strike a chord between their multifarious influences with punk chutzpah and grunge grit. While the opening pop-punk/alt-rock numbers go down smooth enough, the clobbering doom-metal chug of “Throw You On The Sword”—Black Sabbath jump scare!—followed by “American Porn” feminist rage à la Hole, will set you straight. As the contorted, monstrous figures on the album cover might suggest, Die Spitz wrestle with the American condition of being both the consumed and the consumer, both politically and personally.
On its softer moments, like the atmospheric “Sound To No One” or the languid “Go Get Dressed” with its Xanned-out slide guitar, romance and drugs become means of escape as one consumes to disappear, while a song like “Voir Dire” pushes back against the games that the elite play in our face (“You can get what you want, but you’ll beg for what you need”).
Other tracks like the tongue-in-cheek “Red40” (“I don’t want it, but I need that shit”) and punk thrasher “RIDING WITH MY GIRLS” are a more lighthearted means to an end (the end being surviving under patriarchy and capitalism). They’re fierce, they’re brash, they’re hot and cool—Die Spitz have quickly risen to the top of my list of “Bands I Need to See Live.”
The Fat Angel Sings 