Seven scratchy punk gems channeling a thing in which disaffected youth and energetic misfits alike can rally against the snow-soaked blandness of the Illinoian city they inhabit. Running the gamut from the proto-punk mayhem of DV8 to the early hardcore toughness of The Effigies and from the sinister outsider art of The Tyrades to the comparatively sophisticated Plasmatics. A thrilling statement of middle-finger intensity and rule smashing iconoclasm. Consensus Madness skirts the edges of chaos and good taste, holding a mirror up to society’s ugly underbelly.


Our take: Debut vinyl from this new Chicago band. I recognize some of Consensus Madness’s members from their previous hardcore bands, but there’s more to Consensus Madness than just hardcore. They sound like they’d fit just as well on a hardcore bill—their music is certainly fast and tough enough—as they would on a garage-punk show. Songs like “Stop” and “Animosity” have a surf element to the riffing, which works perfectly with the fast but laid-back, beach punk-style rhythms. And there are some cool hooks, like the killer, Carbonas-esque guitar lead in the bridge section of “Behind.” A+ lyrics too, looking critically at the systems that both enable and inhibit us and reckoning with what it means to be a cog in those machines. I also love that while Consensus Madness has the hookiness of garage-punk, they gave us a hardcore-style 7-song EP rather than a teaser two-song single. Catchy, powerful, cool-ass art… great stuff.