Joyce Collingwood offers up scorching bangover remedies

Joyce Collingwood (Independent)

On its Bandcamp page, the women of Joyce Collingwood suggest that listeners prepare their “bangover remedies” before dropping the needle on this eight-song rager. A more appropriate suggestion would have been something along the lines of “hang on to your fucking hats”. Yes, Joyce Collingwood is that unrelenting, the all-female five-piece hitting the nitrous-oxide switch right off the line with “Hard Cash” and then red-lining it until the closing track, “Good Dog”.

All distortion-stun guitars and machine-gun drumming, this is hardcore as it was played in the fast-and-uncompromising ’80s, with singer Private Minnou sounding every bit as pissed as the genre’s Reagan-era pioneers. The longest track (“Oil Spill”) clocks in at 1:47, the shortest (“Angst”) at a quick-and-vicious 22 seconds. Although it was recorded live off the floor in a studio, there’s something about the album that smells like stale cigarettes, last night’s spilled beer, and dirty practice-space carpets. And that’s meant as a compliment of the highest order.

Once upon a time, Vancouver was home to an army of truly formidable hardcore heavyweights, with stalwarts such as D.O.A. ripping it up in the trenches with acts like House of Commons and Death Sentence. With this face-melting coming-out party, Joyce Collingwood has officially picked up the torch.

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