USA Nails – Feel Worse (2024) [FLAC 24bit/48kHz]

USA Nails – Feel Worse (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 26:43 minutes | 342 MB | Genre: Noise Rock, Post-Punk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © One Little Independent Records

London noise-rock quartet USA Nails relase new album Feel Worse. It’s the first album on their new label One Little Independent Records (home to anarcho-punk bands both old and new; Crass, Bad Breeding and more). The band have forged a considerable reputation since their formation in 2013 from their South London base, comprising of members of Kong, Future Of The Left, Blacklisters, Death Pedals and Silent Front. Feel Worse explores schadenfreude; the pleasure derived from another person’s misfortune. With this, they use new material to attack austerity and UK authoritarianism, consumer culture (particularly the consumption of quick fix reality TV and hyper-capitalist agendas), youth culture and bullying, and more. They do so with their intense and unmistakable brand of abrasive, chaotic post-hardcore. There’s a raw and uncompromising energy to USA Nails, and Feel Worse is their most powerful and vital album to date.Thrashy, post-punk UK outfit USA Nails never short their fans on bombast, and despite a hefty discography, the group never feel stale. Instead, Urgency and seriousness permeate Feel Worse, their sixth record alongside slews of EPs, live recordings and split releases. Of course, any fans of the band over the last near-decade know those two descriptors are wildly off-course. The band aggressively shrug off conventional post-punk norms—this is not an album of playful speaking over simple rhythm as much as it is an album thumbing its nose at tropes.

The run of tracks that start the second half serves as a prime example. While early songs on Feel Worse indicate that this may be their heaviest record to date (see opener “Cathartic Entertainment” or the title track), mid-album screecher “Networking Opportunity” is classic USA Nails—a barrage of noisy guitar noodles and electronics that build over playfully philosophical questions: “What is the meaning of pleasure?” and “What is the meaning of misfortune?” The intentionality in ultra-silly synth jam “Holiday Sea” is a break from the wall of punk riffs. (If there’s a song that plays into the aforementioned tropes, it’s “On Computer Screen”—a speaking-heavy song that laments passing time on electronic devices—but by then the band has fully settled into a wall of sound versus macabre lyricism groove.)

By the sarcasm-dripped final track, “I Love It When You Succeed,” the record has played out the band’s two inner-narratives: full-on noise punk has ceded into post-punk warbling with heavy edges. The band have created their least delicate and most them album to date. The tail of their arc is easily caught; the inside joke that everything is both meaningless and all-too-meaningful is more inviting than ever. – Jeff Laughlin

Tracklist:

1-1. USA Nails – Cathartic Entertainment (04:12)
1-2. USA Nails – Feel Worse (02:16)
1-3. USA Nails – The Sun In The Sands (03:03)
1-4. USA Nails – Pack Of Dogs (01:59)
1-5. USA Nails – Networking Opportunity (02:32)
1-6. USA Nails – Holiday Sea (02:20)
1-7. USA Nails – On Computer Screen (03:08)
1-8. USA Nails – Beautiful Eyes! (02:12)
1-9. USA Nails – An Audience Of Love (02:19)
1-10. USA Nails – I Love It When You Succeed (02:38)

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