The Binz
Get Sauced With… the Binz (Independent)

The important thing about a gimmick is that it be entertaining; if it’s fun, people will willingly play along. For example, with physical media in a state of disarray, instead of a CD (archaic) or an LP (expensive), why not issue your album as a download card attached to a bottle of hot sauce? Get Sauced With… the Binz is exactly that, a code for six new songs attached to a bottle of Jung & Walker hot sauce—proving, as the band’s press release proclaims, that “food is the music format of the future.” (“We could have spray-painted the download codes on a brick, but we felt a bottle of hot sauce might sell better,” Binz frontman Gary Robertz observes.)

Haven’t sampled the sauce yet, but the music certainly delivers. “Gutless” kicks off with a riff worthy of Mission of Burma, then smartly spins things back in time with background “whoa”s that suggest “Stepping Stone” (and I’m talking Paul Revere and the Raiders and/or the Monkees, not Minor Threat). “Radiant City” borrows a title from Canadian filmmaker Gary Burns’s antisuburban pseudodocumentary and has some of the hookiest riffage on hand, with a vocal that evokes Bleach-era Nirvana.

“What Do We Get” offers propulsive hardcore that comes closest to having a straightforwardly anthemic, fist-in-the-air chorus, something the Binz could stand to do more often. All the same, it rocks.