American Thought Criminal Living in Reality CD
It’s been a long time since I’ve been asked to review an objectively awful release here, the kind of recording that you cannot find one nice thing to say about. Thankfully, my drought has ended with this shiny plastic turd from self-described “dissident punk” band AMERICAN THOUGHT CRIMINAL. Poorly played, poorly written, and poorly recorded melodic “punk” with slower parts that will make you wish you were listening to a fourth-rate, third wave suburban ska punk band’s practice tape. And the lyrics…hoooo boy, there’s a lot to unpack here, folks. The world where antiestablishmentarians and reactionary libertarian-fueled conspiracy whack jobs meet is a scary place, but the drivel voiced in songs like “The Enemy of Truth” and “Written on Our Face” is just a pathetic regurgitation of trite MAGA talking points (at best), the kind of nonsense that gives anarchists a bad name—ill-informed and misguided faux rage directed at invisible bogeymen and false flag pedophiles…it’s exhausting and annoying. The biggest crime here is that the music sucks so fucking bad that most listeners will never get to know how much the lyrics suck.