LIP CRITIC

A panic attack in an abattoir. The Prodigy sharing a studio with your local doomsday preacher. Playing the Rainbow Road level of Mario Kart in a crust punk bar. These were just a few of the affective landscapes I encountered while listening to Hex Dealer, the album from New York noiseniks Lip Critic, which might be the most bonkers album of the year. Fronted by Bret Kaser, whose vocal stylings are somewhere between David Byrne sprechgesang and Nicki Minaj doing her Roman Zolanski bit, the band has two (!) drummers and no guitarist, relying on synthesisers to generate their pulverising ditties. Building upon their self-titled album from 2020, Hex Dealer could loosely be bracketed as punk, but that would do a disservice to the absurd cavalcade of influences – ska, hyperpop, DnB, rap – that find their way into the album’s relentless 31-minute runtime. This is to say nothing of their anarchic live shows, which have injected some much-needed humour into a genre that can hew ponderous and self-serious. TANK spoke to Connor Kleitz and Danny Eberle following their whirlwind year of touring Europe. Read the interview below and listen to their techno-heavy TANK Mix.

On their live shows

Danny Eberle We're not trying to do Broadway musical theatre-type shit, but we are trying to put on a show. The two genres colliding within Lip Critic’s music  – hardcore punk and electronic music – are extremely physical things. When you go to a club, there’s a whole light show and everyone's on drugs and dancing. When you go to a hardcore show, the entire show is for everyone. Nobody cares if a kid gets up on stage, or if somebody wants to jump off stage or grab the mic: we encourage that. I think in both genres there's a lack of judgment in the way that you move because it's all dependent on how you feel that music yourself. Mixing the two, we just want to make the most entertaining show possible: that's what we're trying to bring forward with Lip Critic. As for the two drummers thing, it is so difficult but it’s easier in some ways. A lot of bands tour with a lot of amps and expensive guitars and have to figure that situation out. 

On influences

DE As a performer I grew up worshiping Keith Moon. I always loved how much of a goofball he was, granted the dude was on drugs 99% of the time and didn’t have a single thought in his brain the entire time he was performing. I look up to a lot of punk and hardcore frontmen: you look at these dudes and they know how to command a crowd without really trying: it never feels studied. They need this as much as the people watching it need it as well. 

Connor Kleitz We draw a lot from people in our scene. I think a lot about the way James from Shiverboard acts on stage. They play extremely heavy music and he’ll be hiding, peeking out behind his guitar. It’s very serious but it’s funny at the same time. I also think about Zach from YHWH Nail Gun and how he is similarly unserious, yelling “YHWH Nailgun are the best band in the world!” They are kind of the best band, but there’s a certain level of not taking yourself too seriously which is important to have, while at the same trying to be the best band possible from a musical or a technical standpoint. Not letting your ego lead the charge is pretty important. 

On State University of New York at Purchase

CK We all went to SUNY Purchase. Bret and I were both in the studio production program. SUNY Purchase is pretty art-heavy, it has a really big dance program and a relatively large digital arts program. I was doing music there, and more of the technical side of things, as was Bret. Danny went there as well.

DE I didn’t go for music.

CK You were still the busiest musician on campus.

DE I think I played drums more than anybody on campus. It helped that I had a practice space and a lot of people didn’t. I just took a room at the school and was like “This is my practice space now”, left a drum kit in there. It wasn’t mine but…

On freaking out the neighbourhood

DE I'm from Staten Island, New York which is one of the less talked about parts of New York City. Not a lot of music happens here. We played a festival that the local radio station and it was one of the best things I've seen on Staten Island. After that show a lot of my friends and family were like “I've never seen people move like that”.

On doing it yourself

DE We try to be as self-sufficient as we can. I think that comes from us coming from all these different places. Bret comes from a very artistic background: both his parents are artists. Me and Connor come from playing in bands in high school, doing the DIY band thing since we were much younger. I've been playing in bands since I was 12 years old with people older than me. A lot of venues just didn't allow kids in them so when we were younger, we were like “Okay, what's the next option?” We used to go to Funkadelic Studios in Manhattan, and they'd allow us to have shows there. There was this place The 72 which was a drug-free, alcohol-free under-18s venue that we used to play all the time, and it would pack out on Fridays and Saturdays because kids had nothing else to do. I think just coming from those sorts of backgrounds has influenced how we want to make this band work.

On the next album

CK A lot of it is recorded. The way that we create records, there are a lot of moving pieces which we reconstruct collage-style. It’s going to be an album of extremes. We’re trying to pull from both the prettiest aspects of our songs and the most heavy disgusting stuff and bridge that gap.

Hex Dealer is out now.