The Kinky Bastards | Photo Credit: Zane Daniel
Review of The Kinky Bastards – “Are You Kinky?” demo debut
By Forrest Cook
Charging in with the next generation of DFW hardcore/punk rock music comes the newly emerging Kinky Bastards – who in the shape of many great things “punk”, formed less than a month ago, holding semi-regular jam sessions at EMP Studios in Arlington. The band consists of local scene veterans from groups like Contact Grid, Holy Order, Glock, Pulled Under, and Urn, as well as a youthful newcomer, Olan Martin (17), controlling the vox. They recently released Are You Kinky? – their five track demo EP ringing in at a fugacious 5:38.
“We wrote, recorded, and released the demo in under a week,” says Martin, who’s roughly a decade younger than each of the other Bastards. Despite the apparent age difference, Martin states that the group came together as a joke between good friends. “Ty (Yarborough, guitarist) put us in a group-chat and said, ‘We are a band now called The Kinky Bastards’ and it just kind of stuck,” he says.
Martin is responsible for putting together the Vibefest event readers may have heard about in the days just before the “Rona”. It took place at Central Arts, a small DIY art space in Bedford, where show-goers flocked far beyond the buildings legal capacity, provoking the fire marshall to briefly halt the music before allowing a resurgence so long as only fifty (less than half the original attendees) remained indoors. Olan is noted to have alleviated the situation by only allowing moshers to come inside. The band plans for their debut show to be held at the opening of a new DIY venue owned by Central Arts once the threat of Covid 19 subsides, or circumstances otherwise allow.
Are You Kinky? was written on the Tuesday following Yarborough’s original group chat designation. It was recorded on Saturday, and then released that Sunday (May 17). The demo is a frenzy-driven quickie that may put you in the mood to riot where songs are held together by channels of feedback, and dins of dead notes underscore transitioning power chord structures infused by palm muted breakdowns for decisive clamor, speed, and ferocity. The aggravated homily laid forth by Martin seems very much therapeutic. He touches on topics of disgust such as the often polarized subject of police brutality and the American military industrial complex, to personal reflections from a first-world teenager and the frustration that accompanies merciless parental tactics of punishment for insolence by exercising screen time limits – poking fun at the genre, and maybe himself as well. Where personality can shine through a song title, “No X Box for a Fucking Month” does it best. It’s also less than 30 seconds long.
One to be taken more seriously, is the song “Block”, rounding out the final minute or so of play. It opens with a pulse that hardens into a fury of attack described in relevant lyrics.
“Just another badge. Just another cop.
Just another body on the chopping block.
Enforcing the law. Enforcing the hate.
The hate that you create.
A piece of an old system. And it’s us against them.
A gang of hate led by the state.”
The Kinky Bastards primary musical influences include Poison Idea, and Negative Approach, and “whatever country music Ty is listening to at the time we write something,” says Olan. The demo is available for streaming on YouTube, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTboGb39mI8) and cassettes are available by direct messaging their instagram page, @kinky_records. The Kinky Bastards plan to release another EP within the next month.
