Astoria, Oregon’s Beta Voids are currently busy making noise that truly does not care what you think, locating themselves somewhere between the flailing limbs of early LA hardcore and the sax stabbed chaos of no wave. Their debut EP, ‘Scrape It Off’, sounds like a busted tape deck loaded with Redd Kross riffs, Contortions paranoia, and enough caffeine to keep a circle pit going until dawn. It is the kind of record that smells faintly of beer, hairspray, and old xerox ink, creating a perfect relic of a scene that never really died, it just relocated to a damp coastal basement. The album is full of chaotic, adrenaline soaked punk that nods to Redd Kross, Black Flag, and James Chance, while spinning out into its own dangerous orbit.
Across ‘Scrape It Off’, Mandy Grant and Carrie Beveridge front the storm with twin voiced intensity, a volley of shrieks, sneers, and sly melodic hooks that recall Poly Styrene and Penelope Houston with the voltage cranked dangerously high. Every track is its own small riot, a sweaty mix of jagged guitars, sax chaos, and drums that sound like they were recorded in the back of a van doing eighty down a hill. ‘Baby’s In Detox’ is a wild, two minute collision of screeching sax and tangled guitar, presenting a panic attack with rhythm and a smirk, where the dual vocals trade off like a fight breaking out in stereo. ‘M O T H E R’ swings harder into straight ahead rock, with a grimy Iggy and the Stooges pulse and a bassline that sounds like it is trying to escape the mix. It sits somewhere between Vancouver’s Subhumans and The Sonics, a nasty middle ground of sneer and stomp, while ‘Brain Malfunction’ packs the furious chops of Angry Samoans and the twitchy swing of The Minutemen, like a gear shifting punk car chase scored by caffeine and bad decisions.