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What’s up Sorry Staters?
Happy Holidays, everybody! Hope everyone is curling up by the fire with some bourbon-spiked vegan eggnog and the soothing sounds of depressive Satanic black metal. Or Bing Crosby. Whatever floats your boat. Me personally, I do all I can to avoid your typical played-out Christmas music that cycles ad nauseum on the radio and in grocery stores. There’s nothing worse than a white dude playing electric blues guitar while gruffly crooning about Santa Claus. Makes me wanna puke even more than the aforementioned spiked ‘nog. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t hate this time of year or anything. I just care more about the wholesome family time and couldn't care less about the whole colorful lights and Jesus part of it. Anyway, I won’t drag on about the holidays. I’m sure any of you Sorry Staters reading this on Christmas Day could use a welcome break from all that.
This week, I decided to write about the new 7” from Chueko we just got in stock. Chueko are from the Portland area, and I’m pretty sure the band has folks from Alienator, Suck Lords, and other bands from that whole crew. A buddy actually gave me a copy of Chueko’s demo tape back in 2022. I guess he’s chums with them, so the band hooked him up with a few copies. I immediately loved it. To my ears, it sounded like a pretty raw 4-track recording. Pretty clean, almost jangly guitar, but with a heavy, groovy rhythm section. This is such a corny adjective, but Chueko is just SLAMMIN’, dude. Stompy, punchy UK82-style punk would be my lazy description. But the singer has this gnarly, vicious voice and sings mostly in Spanish, which is rad and makes the band really stand out.
But now they’ve got this new EP, courtesy of Black Water. The production on this new 7”, titled Tools Of Oppression, is decidedly more blown out and noisy sounding. It’s funny, incredibly more-so than the tape, the bass player is totally killing it on this new EP. Like… SHREDDING it. Because the guitar sound is much more gritty, the bass sounds really pronounced in the mix and honestly comes across like the lead instrument haha. Fuck playing the bass heavy on the low notes to support the guitar riffs. Are you kidding? I’m talkin’ bout combing out that wild hair and rippin’ it up on them high strings, baby. It’s killer.
I did reference UK82 earlier, and the intro to the song “Stupid People” is like a direct homage to “Knife’s Edge” by GBH. But in a killer way. I was like, “oh fuck yeah.” One of the many strengths of Chueko is that they can write a catchy ass tune. I’m gonna sound like a total hater, but in recent years, I feel like punk bands coming out write a series of heavy riffs and stitch them together in a composition that technically qualifies as the benchmark for “hardcore tune.” But rarely these days do I feel like bands write actual SONGS. Sometimes, I’ll listen to newer bands and I just feel like the record just kinda… happens TO me, like a barrage of noise just washes over me. But for my money, Chueko have that knack to write these catchy sing-along choruses. There are gang vocal parts all over this record, and I’m absolutely here for it. It’s easy to imagine this band playing a gig and the crowd piling on top of one another to bogart the mic when the time comes for everyone to sing, “OUT TO GET YOU!” But even with the chanted vocals, I would not say this band comes across as “tough” exactly. The label affectionately describes the 4 characters in this group as a “cluster of weirdos,” which I felt like I could sense immediately. Chueko is queerer, weirder and more ripping than all you punk-ass mofos. Highly recommend.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got this time. Catch our end-of-year wrap-ups next round. As always, thanks for reading.
‘Til next YEAR,
-Jeff