4 out of 5

Label: Learning Curve Records

Produced by: Adam Tucker (sound engineer)

Some moons ago, the throat-shredding, blitzkrieg punk of Gouge Away landed, and heads rightfully turned their way. Perhaps somewhat inevitably for a young, arguably over-enthusiastic band – that enthusiasm runs out more quickly as you age – their followup album was a bit more grunge forward, emerging somewhat fully in that genre on a third disc.

Yeah, In Lieu’s Nikki Post’s screams are of a different quality than those of Gouge’s Christina Michelle – imagine L7 delivered with more punch-your-face bravado, like Aml and the Sniffers – and In Lieu deals moreso in sludge rock, but there’re some soundalike threads here to pull on. However, the trajectory of each band has been different: I dig Gouge Away’s later releases, but there’s some magic to how intense their debut is. Meanwhile, it’s flip-flopped with In Lieu, starting with more of a grunge aesthetic, and getting progressively heavier, until nearly 10 years in and “Hooligan” goes heavy and mean and loud. Nicki and her crew pulled themselves to this sound, note by note, and so even though I have some tonal and sequencing quibbles with the release, that history gives the band – the album – an incredible wollop that keeps your fist pumping and head banging throughout.

Core riffs drive each song from, generally, quiet to loud; short runtimes prevent aural overload from pretty raw shouting on Post’s behalf, and booming drums and guitar that engineer Adam Tucker adds a lot of weight to – regardless of the ten years, there’s a punk ethos here that’s not making any given rhythm too complicated, and so it’s mostly energy that carries this.

But it’s carried far. Post’s writing is pretty angry and linear, lashing out at given topics – though unlike Gouge Away’s debut, there’s some self-awareness to how silly that one-note meanness can be – and her delivery just shoves you right into the mosh pit of being angry as well; the quiet-to-loud thing never tires because the group finds a memorably melody for (almost) each track; and it’s a get-in get-out mentality that leaves you wanting more.

Though that last bit is also a criticism: In Lieu kind of overcorrects for brevity, preventing tracks which really deserve more time from spreading out. There are some truly awesome riffs here that we get once on a track, building to something, and then… we’re done. And I suspect opener ‘Petz’ was an oddball that didn’t fit in with the sequencing, as it’s one of the more flagrant instances of back to back songs sharing pacing and tone.

We’ll circle back around to praising the short length of Hooligan, though, as these criticisms can be smoothed over by listening to the album on repeat, which is almost a requirement once the seed of its songs are plants.