by Myles Tiessen
After years of demos and high energy performances, REALiTY GROUP now releases into the wild a pure animalistic album, Music For Fools Vol. 1. Containing a certain level of abrasiveness that will bring your blood to a boil and enough animation to demand attention. This album will bring you into a familiar, yet contemporary form of punk.
Sonically bringing the listener back to the late ‘80s with strong punk and new wave styles, REALiTY Group effortlessly builds an effigy to the mischievous classics, Butthole Surfers, all the while sounding uniquely themselves.
REALiTY GROUP steps through genres and blends aspects of psychedelic, metal, and even the odd classic rock riff to tear down traditional interpretation, leaving it hard to place in the conventional punk arena. The spectral nature of Music For Fools Vol. 1 creates for some of the most freeing music in recent memory.
The production of the album goes into helping elevate the record, whether it be bright cymbal crashes from the drums or a compelling pitch shift for the vocals, the creativity found on Music For Fools Vol. 1 is seemingly inexhaustible.
The riffs on tracks like “AEG MAHA” (which display the Surfers’ influence; see “Sweet Loaf”) will leave welcomed earworms and the goofy nature of “WHEELS” keeps the album from getting bogged down in an austere manner or grandeur self-importance often found in the genre.
On the album’s finale, “BEE TRACK”, the group utilizes a drum machine, minimalist bass lines and skin searing guitars to create a framework on which to insert a robotic voice that educates the listener on the disastrous fall of the bee population, upon which Neo-liberal corporations market bee-drones to take the place of the living insects.
In times when quarantine ushers society indoors and frustration becomes a daily part of life, Music For Fools Vol. 1 steers away from the nihilism so often felt these days and brings a level of effervescence that is so desperately needed. Here’s to more on Volume 2.