Baltimore unit Knub hit me up on Instagram the other day and when I went to check out their debut EP, it caught my ear right the fuck away! Reminiscent of Helmet meets Downer with more of a lurching noise rock oomph to the textural aspects of their sound, the four-song/14-minute outing already has me eager to hear more. Expect loads of churning grit countered by eerily melodic dissonance, and vocals that perfectly teeter the tightrope across singing and shouting. Rock-solid production, too: heavy and hard-hitting without the slightest lack of detail/clarity. There are some super blown-out tones happenin' here—plus occasional light effects over the vocals—but you can always hear the bass, the drums sound great... just all-around awesome. Damn. Yeah. Every song is great, and I think "Stutter" is my favorite, but... "Wrong Right Time" is definitely up there, too.
The tunes are available as a name your price download on Bandcamp, or you can grab a limited edition cassette (35 clear, 65 translucent blue) from The Ghost is Clear Records—who's really got a lock on the best-of-the-best from this niche when you add Knub to the list that already includes End You, Rid of Me, etc. Streamers, do your thing with Spotify or whatever.
UPDATE: A few hours after sharing this post, it struck me that Knub really reminds me of another Baltimore band called Onespot (a.k.a. Onespot Fringehead) that I've gushed about in the past. I reached out to Knub and they confirmed that their vocalist is in fact Dave Ort from Onespot, so... there's a cool trivia tidbit for you. And definitely check out Onespot if you're unfamiliar. Their '90s era full-length is on Spotify.
