Intro5pect

(A-F)
by Scott Hefflon

When ya first hear Intro5pect, you either love ’em or hate ’em. They bring together so many volatile elements, it’s an explosive reaction, whichever way it goes. Like Oreo’s on pizza, you either say “wow, that’s great!” or you hurl.

Intro5pect is from Orange County, sound fake British like crazy, and are political punk, I think… Their bio is in all caps, and it’s filled with all that anti-commercial bitching about music in ads for cars and cell phones. Ok, and then the real news, Intro5pect are punk rock, yet include samples, breakbeats, frantic paces, and both live and synthesized guitars. Lots of whoa-whoa’s and unity cheers, but also plenty of Pop Will Eat Itself, The Chemical Brothers, and general Metropolis Records influence worked in. Into punk. Political punk. Makes sense once you think about it (digital hardcore, gabba, and plenty of other hard breakbeat music is “punk” in its way, and lots of sing-a-long punk has a basic pounding beat – often that “polka” beat – so this is just faster and a lot more, uh, dense), but ya gotta hear it and let it sink in. This is basically what that innovative lil’ punk band did in High Fidelity, combine punk snarl and frantic breakbeats.

If this catches on and every mohawked dumfuk gets a sampler and drum machine they don’t know how to use, life is gonna suck even harder than now (cuz let’s face it, it’s easy as shit to write decent punk songs, just like it’s easy to make decent industrial/EBM/hard dance music), but at this stage, Intro5pect is a breath of fresh, technology-tinged air.

Or, like I said, you’ll hear this and hate it worse than stepping in dogshit.
(PO Box 71266 Pittsburg, PA 15213)