DESCRIPTION:
Lassie?

If you, for whatever reason, choose to heed every word that comes out of this particular idiot’s smelly mouth, you might be able to recall my writings on The Noids from about three weeks ago. They’re a Denton punk group who have put out two separate releases, with their then-most recent “Modern Life” tape being my personal favorite (though admittedly, I miss their Urinals cover much more than I should). In that video’s write-up, I mentioned that The Noids intended to have a whole new tape out by “mid-June”, and that’s partly-true; this brand-new split tape with Lassie was released on their Bandcamp in late-June. But hey, before any of my already non-existent credibility gets tarnished any further, I was just quoting my information from the source, alright?

Well, me directly-quoting from the source is quickly becoming a problem, especially with this tape. You see, I barely know shit about it, and the two people that I asked about it seemed to kinda pussy-foot around it. I’m beyond familiar with The Noids, seeing that I’ve already written about them in the past, so they’re not so much of an anomaly anymore. For those who aren’t aware (which you shouldn’t be, seeing that I’ve already written about them in the last paragraph), The Noids is a three-piece punk group hailing from Denton, Texas that shares members with Laughter and Elix-R, which are other North Texas-based bands… as well as Lassie, evidently. According to Josh—er, “Joose”—who handles vocals and guitar in The Noids, Lassie is just members of The Noids taking on different roles: Lauren (who handles bass and vocals in The Noids) on drums, Ryan (who plays bass in The Noids) on guitar, and Josh on bass and vocals. Now, listening to Lassie’s two tracks on this tape, I’m a little curious as to why they chose to form an entirely different group: their music is a noticeably more incessant, noisy and deranged, but otherwise seems as if it could’ve potentially found itself to be in a Noids release without anyone thinking twice about it. Josh said he would’ve told me a bit more about Lassie, but then went to go eat at Chili’s and didn’t get back to me until the next morning, where he told me that Will Mecca (A.K.A. Willy Checka) might have “choice words” to say about Lassie. I later asked him, and this is all Will had to say on it: “Lassie is serious. Very serious.”

Not kidding, that’s it. So, being the good punk detective that I am, I stuck my nose in places where it doesn’t belong to try and figure out a teensy-weensy bit more on Lassie, like their approximate formation date or any past releases/shows, and eventually came across this Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/lassie420/
After seeing that, I pretty much gave up on my search, and I had barely even looked at the first page of Google search results. Because, evidently, Lassie is, in fact, serious. VERY serious, as denoted by insightful comments such as “iff u like Pina colahduh”, “do u like soda pop”, and “Pass the catnip my bro”. I’m beginning to run out of room to write in this description, but it’s fine, because Lassie clearly speaks for itself: it’s a weed-loving doggo, I guess, I don’t see any reason why you can’t get down with that.

Now that we're all clear on the bands' backgrounds, let's get to the tape. The Noids is just as impressive as always, with the group presenting six brand-new tracks to lose your mind to. At this point, they've acutely cemented their hardcore post-punk direction, and have made something that's equally chilling and destructive. Their songs are absurdly-good, but that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. I've already written about The Noids before, so if you're interested in hearing my expanded thoughts on their sounds, you can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqDGUpeI4D8
Lassie is a bizarre entity that I still can't exactly wrap my mind around, even though its been almost a week since this tape was released. They've only got two tracks here, with them each being three minutes long and occupying the remaining third of the tape's duration. To start with, their tracks are considerably louder than The Noids' tracks, which I'm assuming is to further amplify their noisy demeanor. Gone are the finer intricacies of The Noids' musicianship, instead replacing the tempered vocal harmonies and trade-offs with a single blaring vocalist, the orderly bass lines with brutish rhythms, disciplined drumming with abrasive drum beats, and elaborated riffs with frantic guitar strangling and a mess of feedback. Essentially, Lassie is as if The Noids was a dog who was let off its own chain to go completely wild and do its own thing. I doubt that analogy was intended, but it seems appropriate.

TRACK LIST:

THE NOIDS:
The Road - 0:00
Poison - 2:09
Fear - 4:14
Regret - 7:24
Polluted - 9:56
Greed - 11:42

LASSIE:
Lassie Theme Song - 13:40
Who Let The Dogs Out - 16:46

DOWNLOAD: https://thenoids.bandcamp.com/album/the-noids-lassie-unhappy-dog-split