Going Off – “Going Off” [EP] [Album Review]

You’re a young punk. It’s your first time in the city: your friends brought you to a show. You’re expecting a concert hall, line ups, and security – maybe you’ll get a chance to pop into an alley and down that bottle of booze you swiped from your folks. Instead, you turn up at what looks like an abandoned warehouse, surrounded by chain-link fences, rubble, and a few shady looking individuals. The most intrepid of your group ask them where the show’s at. One of them sticks their thumb vaguely into the shadows. A moment of pause. Then you walk forward and down into the darkness.

Red fire exit lights are the only illumination down cement stairs into the basement. As you make your way down, you hear rumbling, like the earth itself is trying to talk to you. A piece of cardboard is duct-taped to the wall, on it a painted arrow pointing down the hall. At the end is a door illuminated at its edges, a shadow to the side standing sentinel. By this point the rumbling has become rhythmic dissonance, punishing and brutal tone married to a tempo that makes your head bob without noticing. You stand before the door, and the shadow looks you up and down, then nods, and opens the door and motions you and your friends in urgently before slamming the door.

Inside there are at least a hundred punks. A lone floor floodlight provides the only illumination. The heat and noise hit you like a wall; you could swear you’ve just walked into the Underworld. The band is playing loud. They’re playing fast. They play with fury. The entire crowd moves in a sea of arms and legs and screaming faces. Going Off would be the band playing that show.

This band’s self-titled debut does more in less than 9 minutes than most hardcore albums getting released today. It feels thrashy and noisy, and grimy as all hell. But most of all, it makes you feel unsafe; like your first time at a hardcore show where you wondered how you were going to make it out alive. There had better be more coming from this lot. Otherwise, I’ll be sorely disappointed.

Going Of Track Listing:

01. Going Off
02. With Love
03. Fear & Faith
04. Stain
05. Feed
06. A Sincere Apology
07. The Big Joke
08. Prescription Poison

Run Time: 8:59
Release Date: December 12, 2019
Record Label: Self-Release