For the sake of your own sanity, sometimes you have to mock your enemies—even the ones you’ll never actually meet. “I am insufferable, unbelievably satisfied/It’s my place to tell you what is wrong,” John Dwyer whines on Osees’ “Fight Simulator” with a slightly aristocratic, pseudo-intellectual accent. As his monologue extends—the protagonist is defective, locked up, a sadist inflicting punishment—the tempo decelerates and Dwyer’s voice melts like wax dripping down a candlestick. “For how long?” he repeats slower and slower, until it’s a half-asleep gargled whisper. Now, doesn’t that feel better?
That’s largely how ABOMINATION REVEALED AT LAST is delivered; Osees move rabidly, letting off steam to avoid imploding from the pressure buildup of nonstop loathing and disgust. Upon returning to a recording studio in Tornillo, Texas, next to a now-defunct “tent city,” Dwyer and his band—drummers Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone, guitarist and keyboardist Tom Dolas, bassist Tim Hellman—channeled their frustration into music that spits at our slurry of fascist realities: relentless genocides, kidnapped civilians, A.I. embracement, tech billionaires unleashed in a yard with no electric fence. “It’s been a long year already,” Dwyer said when announcing Osees’ latest album in June. He meant to convey his exhaustion with the state of the world, but sonically, the garage-rock icon and his bandmates come across more fired up than they did on last year’s synth sampler diorama Sorcs 80.
There’s little need to read between the lines on ABOMINATION REVEALED AT LAST. “Musk is done/Mark is done/We want/Shift that’s coming,” Dwyer howls over proto-punk drumming on “Protection,” throwing the song’s brassy synth notes like darts at social media’s villains. In “God’s Guts,” he sees through politicians’ campaigns: “I know you’re a man of faith/Dipped in blood and ordained.” Osees prevent their songs from feeling like a stale regurgitation of discourse by packaging them with fury. On that latter track, Dwyer’s screeches are like a cougar’s most grating roar, while his bandmates enact a sped-up disco-punk shuffle. Later, on “Ashes 1,” they go full hardcore, with Rincon and Quattrone adding a tiny hiccup into their drum patterns to prevent the onslaught of noise from becoming overwhelming.
Despite a handful of truly pissed-off songs, Osees’ latest doesn’t offer a full sequel to the caustic punk of 2022’s A Foul Form. Caffeinated jitters turn into psych-rock jams fairly often, resulting in the danceable “Glass Window” or that long guitar solo punctuating “Glüe.” On closer “Glitter-Shot,” Osees embody the disaffected post-punk of Preoccupations, right down to the deep monotone bellows, while mocking a not-hard-to-guess tyrant at the Capitol. The best of the bunch, though, is “Sneaker,” in which the two drummers lock into a krautrock groove while Hellman and Dolas play off one another. It’s not too dissimilar from the loose no-wave of Chime Oblivion, Dwyer’s new side-project. Only here, in the unmistakable hands of Osees, it becomes a trippy exodus that plays ever so slightly into the rhythmic swagger of the band’s past work.
As Osees ride their 29th album to the finish line, Dwyer is still 100% committed. From chasing song ideas to convulsing onstage, tongue out with a guitar perched on his collarbone, he’s not tired of it yet—much to his surprise. A path this long often curves enough to complete a circle, and on ABOMINATION REVEALED AT LAST, Osees begin their return flight to the garage-rock headbanging of their mid-2010s material. There’s too much synth and wooden drumming to sound like a full throwback to their Thee Oh Sees days, but you wouldn’t be misguided if you said the album’s title and art mirror Mutilator Defeated at Last from a decade ago. (“We leave a lot to interpret on our fans,” Dwyer said about the parallels.) For now, Dwyer and his bandmates sound rejuvenated incorporating multiple genres while still letting out the pent-up punk.
