You Send Me Things, I Listen to Them: FREEDUMB
Shred your tendons to dust with some gnarly Norwegian skatepunk.
Adulthood fucking sucks. I go to an office every morning and work ridiculous hours, just to come home to work on a stupid website for jerks until late in the night. Sometimes I wish I had the freedom to just get on my skateboard and shred through the neighborhood; defying gravity, righteous punk jams blasting the block, not a care in the world, just like it was when I was a kid. Then I remember that childhood actually sucked way harder than adulthood and I’ve always been horse shit at skateboarding. Oh well.
Freedumb feels my pain and provides an emotional salve with their latest record Feeding the Tapeworm. Alert music nerds will notice that Freedumb took their name from Suicidal Tendencies 1999 album of the same name. Thankfully, Freedumb does the Cyco crew justice. Rejoice, ye disaffected punk youths turned bitter adults, the music contained within this record will take you back to the days of low-budget skate vids and Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtracks. These Norwegian punks have been at it for 13 years, which officially makes their band an angsty teen.
According to the band themselves, “Freedumb hail from the dirty eastern corner of Norway called Østfold and deliver intense punkrock / hardcore. Feeding the tapeworm is a bundle of stories about the destructive dark sides of humans, with lyrics dealing with intoxication, regret, blackout, suicidal thoughts and distance infatuation.” Overall, this album is well worth your time, provided you want to spend your time playing air guitar or pretending to skateboard. Freedumb get high praise from this dummy.
Feeding the Tapeworm opens with “Gimme A Break”, a rollicking punk tune that’ll surely endear fans of the early work of both D.R.I. and Propagandhi. From there, the band moves to “Husets Vin”, a minute and a half of catchier-than-hell thrash. “Haters” hits a persistent groove while maintaining simmering rage. The riffs in “Stengte Ører” sound like they could have been composed in Punk-o-matic, and I mean that as the most sincere compliment. Guest vocalist Karine Brække delivers the goods on “Right in Front of You”, an anthem that gets my skinny wrists pumping to the heavens with righteous teenage fury.
Feeding the Tapeworm dropped February 10th. I’m not sure where it’s available for purchase, so hit Freedumb up on Facebook for additional info and tell ’em a sentient toilet from hell sent you.
