words Edward Harrington
Somewhere from the silence of eerie suburbia, a noise is building… That noise is the noise of Jeremy Snyder and Bianca Abarca, the alternative rock duo based in Brooklyn. Pure Adult recently released their new single ‘Hot Crusade’ ahead of their debut album ‘Pure Adult II’ set to be released January 27th.
The song is like a journey through Jeremy Snyder’s mind – a mind of someone who was politely dragged up through elitist religious extremism in America… You can hear the anger and bitterness he feels towards the types of belief systems like the cult he was brought up in – that he once convinced himself he believed in, but also the long lasting dissonance and gloom attributed to it, like he sees the world differently to anyone else because of it.
The song starts like a punchy punk song and gradually morphs into chaos, taking the listener into the depths of Jeremy’s frustration around his upbringing, and peeling back the layers of his terrifying trauma and inner turmoil to reveal the real evil lurking there…
Jeremy has described how his parents banned him from having anything to do with music, art and even friends that were non-christian, but secretly listened to bands like Swans and Sonic Youth when they weren’t looking.
Pure Adult’s music is organic and gritty, as well as being incredibly sophisticated. If people want a punk band that feeds them an attractive mantra, then they should look elsewhere. Pure Adult aren’t the sort of band that wants an audience to love them, rather than to look at themselves and think about who they are in relation to society. Their music challenges, twists, comforts and spits you out all within the same space.
It’s social commentary at its very best, delving into the strangeness and sedation of modern culture, and shaking us like a kid from a dream, telling us to wake up. Every song feels like a backlash to a terrible fever, inciting a necessary sickness towards the dark, dressed up world around us. Exciting and thrilling, surreal yet blatant.
It’s not often that a band’s music has so many layers as well as hints to other genres – like swirling turbulence of its own essence, full of authenticity and surprises. From jolting and macabre, to dreamscape-like and eerily orchestral, this band does not seem to be running out of ideas anytime soon. Apparently already reinventing themselves, it genuinely is intriguing to wonder where they will take us.
Pushing against norms, they are taking out the supposed “cool” in lofi punk rock and replacing it with “gruel.” Their music is as refined as it is unhinged, their songs like pieces of avant garde theatre that take you to weird and wonderful places that remind you of the truth, like the music is almost grasped out of the nightmare world and thrown in front of you. Pure Adult are chemists of their own vaccine to vileness, getting you hooked on a radio of raucous realism and wanting you to go with it…
Pure Adult II is due out January 27th via FatCat Records. You can pre-order the album here
