Neighborhood Brats – Confines Of Life

California’s Neighborhood Brats are set to release their third full length, Confines Of Life, later this month via Dirt Cult Records and Taken By Surprise Records, an album that follow in the wake of 2014’s Recovery and 2018’s Claw Marks. Confines Of Life, like so many releases that are flooding into The Punk Site in recent months, was recorded after the lockdown brought live music to a juddering halt across the world. Neighborhood Brats still possess the core of the band, vocalist Jenny Angelillo and guitarist George Rager, having survived line up changes, relocation, the almost inevitable hiatus and now a global pandemic, and have released an album that encapsulates the fury and frustration of the post covid world.

The first distorted chords of opener Who Took The Rain? give way to a new wave influenced track that eases you into the Confines Of Life, from here things get more frantic. The punked up psychobilly of Signs And Semantics and the punk rock of Miss America Pagent sees their. collective foot planted firmly on the gas. Whilst it’s almost impossible to pick favourites from Confines Of Life, the most hard hitting moments are the scathing trio of Harvey Weinstein (Is A Symptom), All Nazis Must Die, a surfy instrumental that takes the Dead Kennedys ethos of Nazi Punk’s Fuck Off one step further, and I Weep For The Future, a sentiment we can all share. As should be clear by now, whilst there’s a solid punk rock core lying at the heart of Neighborhood Brats, they adopt other elements and incorporate them into the near perfect manic sub 30 minute blast, one that sees everything from indie, through garage punk and surf, to hardcore blended into the hyperactive mix.

The inevitable comparisons that spring to mind are The Epoxies shorn of their 80’s gimmickry, an angry version of The Primitives or maybe a toned down Natterers as well as the obvious contemporaries such as The Venemous Pinks, who also covered the album’s closing track, Joan Jett’s I Want You, on their latest release. As Confines Of Life blurs past you’ll hear different elements on every track, but each cut is unmistakably from The Neighborhood Brats. This is an album born of the post pandemic world, and all the other associated horrors that have been unwelcome bookmarks in recent history, and the end result is a near as dammit to perfect snapshot of the last year in the lives of The Neighborhood Brats. If you wanted to take something positive from COVID then this album might just be it.

Confines Of Life will be released on May 28th and is now available for pre-order via Dirt Cult Records in the US and Taken By Surprise Records in Europe.