'Inventive' is not used nearly enough when it comes to describing hardcore punk and when it is it's usually attached to second-rate bands who use too much phaser and space echo. Fortunately Oklahoma City's American Hate bring blitzing and fast paced damage when mixing up some more experimental type sounds.Their excellent 2014 EP Dead Squeeze was likened to United Mutation and 80s Wisconsin weirdos Mecht Mensch and Die Kreuzen and their new album Our Love is Real pushes the wigged out energy."I'm fucked in the head" screams vocalist Ross Adams during "Contagious", in what is essentially two-and-a-half minutes of burly anxiousness that's main refrain is "I don't think that it's contagious, I could be wrong."Adams, an Oklahoma City punk stalwart and artist, who is also behind the Everything Is Not OK fest, breathes fire on songs such as the opening "Milk and Honey" and "Bending Concrete" where he screams "Maybe it's time you tried to walk a mile, And if the shoe doesn't fit you should wear it anyway." This is blistering hardcore both in sound and sentimentThough not as frantic as Void's classic 1982 track "Who Are You", their track of the same name references similar paranoid sentiment of "Who are you and why am I here?"Recorded by the band's Anthony Manganaro and Tim Buchanan, who is also the lead songwriter in the excellent Cherry Death, and mastered by Mikey Young, Our Love is Real's is up there with Wiccans' Sailing a Crazy Ship, as one of the best punk albums of 2017.'Our Love is Real' is available now on Not Normal Tapes.Image: Garett Fisbeck
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