Fictional Days LP
Reptilian Records, 2026
Not a bad way to go out, paying tributes to your influences and sandwiching them with four of your own crunchy creations. This final release from Baltimore group Birth (Defects) makes a fitting epitaph for the band, perfectly demonstrating their bent take on noise rock with cover songs that highlight their unique sonic palette of dense, wavering Killing Joke guitar tones, buzzing low end bass, percussive fits and noisy outbursts that gush with a seasick sway. Sonic Youth’s “Sunday” comes off like Swans doing the glazed glam pop of Plexi, with metallic scraping sounds and a loud-louder-loud dynamic instead of the typical quiet-loud-quiet schtick found in most collegiate indie rock playbooks. “Scapegoat” is a knuckle-dragging rendition of a tune by fellow B-more wrecking crew The New Flesh, muscled up with a dizzying swirl of fuzzed out low end bass tones, flittering electronics, and warbled, nauseous single note guitar shards that cut through the din. In addition to a nearly unrecognizable version of The Comsat Angels’ “Postcard”, The Birth (Defects) also dig out a deep cut from the Nirvana catalog, the notorious B-side of the Penny Royal Tea 7″ (also tracked on The Beavis and Butthead Experience compilation CD) that was pulled from shelves shortly after Cobain offed himself, prophetically titled “I Hate Myself and Want to Die”.
The band’s own tracks include “Doubts”, which has a beautifully stunted riff that gets pummeled with a minimalist monotony that indeed evokes the anxiety of unresolved doubts in a rich melodic stew, while “Take”, from an ultra-limited lathe-cut 7″, fries ear drums and brain cells with some gnarled free guitar scree before it kicks into a smoking 4/4 stomper. The final track turns SSD’s “How Much Art Can You Take?” into a 6+ minute Drunks With Guns/Flipper-esque dirge (not especially surprising for a band that released a live tape entitled Will Shatter Rides Again) that closes the record and nearly overstays its welcome, unlike the band, who in its dozen years left only a handful of releases for us to ponder and procure. The cover art featuring a nine block grid with a decaying form that perhaps represents the nine tracks on this farewell fury by the artist, author and avant metal band Locrian’s Terence Hannum, which makes a mighty fine tribute itself, neatly wrapping up the full Birth (Defects) birthdeath experience.