EAST COAST THRASH PUNKS KICK START THE NEW YEAR

ALBUM REVIEW | OH THE HUMANITY! – GROUND TO DUST (released 24/01/2024) by Craig Harston

2025 is already off to a great start within the punk rock scene and keeping things going are Massachusetts melodic thrash band, Oh The Humanity! with their third album ‘Ground To Dust’. And it’s an absolute belter!

The album opens with the instrumental ‘Imposter Syndrome’ before crashing straight into single ‘Gutted’ with it’s absolutely brutal guitars. It’s a self-deprecating song with it’s focus on how we probably don’t deserve to be happy and is pretty relentless and goes huge towards it’s end with an excellent guitar solo and screamed vocals of “Wasting time and waste away”. It’s quickly followed up by most recent single – and the superbly titled – ‘Upper Riffspiratory Infection’, a song that finds singer Kevin Athas lamenting how difficult it can be to move forward with our lives with one foot in the past, all set to a backdrop of relentless drums and crunching guitars.

Things get profoundly serious on ‘Worth Nothing’ and ‘Circumstances’, the former following it’s slow-fast-slow-fast opening with words pointing out the vicious social cycle we live in, where we work to buy stuff we don’t need, to then work more to buy more stuff we don’t need, and on and on and on, featuring some supremely tight drums.Meanwhile ‘Circumstances’ features hard-hitting lyrics about what it is to be human and how easy it is to look past someone who’s circumstances put them in a desperate situation : “Do you see me? ‘cause I see you too. We’re one in the same. We’re human fucking beings.”

Elsewhere, Oh The Humanity! get their emo on for ‘Love Irresolute’, a tune that ramps up the bands melodic side over the heaviness, and even more so on ‘Last Gasp’, which is an immensely catchy ‘bubblegum thrash’ song that features an excellent bridge and a great chorus: “I’ll save my happy ending for my last gasp in your arms”. ‘Blues’, meanwhile, is a sharp stab of punk rock, clocking in at under two minutes.

Closing out the album, the title track ends things on a hopeful note and takes a leaf out of contemporaries Strung Out’s book, ramping up the metal with it’s guitars, including a superb guitar solo and lyrics focussing on looking to a brighter future across it’s epic six minutes and twenty one seconds: “Maybe we can move on, Accept that things will never change, accept the pain will always stay”.

Over eleven blistering tracks, Oh The Humanity! attempt to put the world to rights and the album overall features plenty of gut wrenching lyrics, gang vocals, huge hooks, ripping guitars and thundering drums. 2025 is looking bright for the Massachusetts natives!

‘Ground To Dust’ releases on 24th January – Pre-order/save HERE.