THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “There’s long been a growl festering in the West, an earthen rumble fed by tectonic tension, acrid smoke, and sun-parched air. The brew has boiled over lately, a pressure-cooked chaos that can no longer be contained. The growl has grown to a howl… and the howl is at the door.
Few are as ready to meet the madness head on as Frankie And The Witch Fingers. On the upcoming Data Doom the band hurtle the listener head first into the wood-chipper of technological dystopia, systemic rot, creeping fascism, the military-industrial profit mill, and a near-constant erosion of humanity that peels away the soul bit by bit. With a fuse lit by these modern-day monstrosities, the band seek salvation through a 1,000-watt wake-up of rock ’n’ roll exfoliation.
After tearing through the tender heart of the Midwest, Frankie And The Witch Fingers found themselves clamped down on the fried edges of Los Angeles, carving out a niche that’s equal parts molten tar-pit teardown and cataclysmic careen. Anchored by songwriters Dylan Sizemore and Josh Menashe, the band have kept a rotating door of friends and collaborators moving through their midst over the past few years, coalescing post-pandemic into a symbiotic stage beast that’s become the beating heart of Data Doom. Bassist Nikki “Pickle” Smith and drummer Nick Aguilar have been road-hardened and readied over the last year, laying the groundwork for the new record’s 300 pounds of pummel and propulsion.
That heft was hurtled onto tape in the band’s Vernon, CA studio space. The locale let the city’s grit creep into the crevices of their new record, a wild swing at the sternum that hits the listener like an adrenaline shot to the heart. Wiping away the haze of stoned-ape psychedelics that permeated their opus Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters… the band favour an asphalt assault of rock, riff, and amphetamine rhythm. As they’ve wound out of the last phase, their sound, over a series of singles, has begun to thicken and throb. It’s coalesced into a darker strain that ingests the explosive impulses of gas-crisis-era proto-punk, the rhythmic insistence of ’70s German progressives, and the elasticity of funk fusionists alike. They’ve welded their arsenal of influences to a chassis of nail-bitten bombast that drives Data Doom into the midst of the maelstrom.
Frankie And The Witch Fingers have shared bills with Kikagaku Moyo, Ty Segall, Oh Sees, Cheap Trick and ZZ Top, churning their stage-side scorch into household recognition — burning through a barrage of multicolored vinyl pressings and sparring with indie heavyweights for Billboard chart positions. Data Doom looks to cement that status, a sinewy slab cut on the stone of social collapse and licking the blade in anticipation of what’s to come. “Never name the darkness itself,” intones Sizemore, but the darkness is already here, embedded in every moment, inextricable from the capital, sabbatical, sustenance, and solace of the modern age. Data Doom is the elixir and the exorcism, it’s the reformation rendered in rock ’n’ roll.”
