Back in April, local San Diego punk band Corporate Citizen put out their self-produced debut album titled A Brief Moment in Sanity. The oddly luring cover art consists of four squares, each with 1/4 of a different band member’s face. Fitted tightly together, the squares come together to form a larger mosaic of one creepy and crazy looking Frankenstein of sorts. Without any description of the music contained within, the vibe of the artwork is still somehow quite telling of the band’s sound.
A Brief Moment of Sanity is a squirrelly and jagged listen from start to finish. From track to track, you can expect a hodgepodge of stop & go dynamics with abrupt tempo & key changes laced with aggressive off-pitch lead vocals and shouty group chants. The instrumental elements are executed with a certain sense of carefree recklessness and everything comes together (much like the cover art squares) to give rise to a bigger picture. From a sound perspective, the “bigger picture” here is a really solid, high-energy punk rock album!
While “energy” is often regarded by many as the soul of punk music, some bands are better than others at conveying it and Corporate Citizen captures it extremely well. To use an analogy from the movie The Dark Crystal, punk rock is merely a Gelfling that got imprisoned by a Skeksis named Corporate Citizen. The Skeksis then hooked up a bunch of wires and tubes to syphon Punk Rock’s “essence” into a vial. The band members then divided the vial contents four ways, toasted one another, and drank the essence down like shots of whiskey before releasing it back into the cosmos in the form of sound.
If I lost you with the Dark Crystal analogy, let me try using a direct lyrical quote from the opening track titled Batten Down the Hatches (easily my favorite on the album) to describe Corporate Citizen:
“Looks like we’re headed into rough seas boys! All hands batten down! Reduce the sails or the mast will crack! All hands batten down! Cut the mainstays, clear the decks! All hands batten down! Incoming wave…brace for IMPACT!!! All hands batten down!”
In this lyric, you are a deck-hand and Corporate Citizen is the wave. Enough said!
For fans of Black Flag, Samiam, Minor Threat, Dag Nasty
3.9 out of 5 SDP Skullz
Artist: Corporate Citizen
Album: A Brief Moment of Sanity
Label: El Topo Records
Release Date: April 26th, 2019
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Reviewed by Todd Dulawan
