punk this week: cut piece, judy and the jerks, pardoner + 5 more

It’s Friday, May 24, and this is Punk This Week—see/saw’s rundown of the latest punk records worth a listen. Up this time around are the new Cut Piece album on Total Punk, a couple killer Mississippi area releases courtesy Judy and the Jerks & Hammer and the Tools, the post-Cruelster beef EP from Pardoner, and a blissfully gnarly offering from St. Louis wreckers Vile Desire. There’s more than that, too. Read on.

Cut Piece: Your Own Good [Total Punk]

There’s a justifiable rage on the new Cut Piece album, where stalkers and creeps and assholes are constantly jockeying to impose their will. The drums thunder, the guitar sound has a jagged post-punk vibe, the pacing is ramshackle, and holy shit are the lyrics razor sharp. “Let me tell you how to walk your dog/Been hunting you for weeks and my grip is strong,” Laura snarls. She’s barking about her hard limits, her boundaries, how she doesn’t share control. It’s a grim realism that fuels the most understandable growl: having to stay on guard because you exist in the world. The final song is the album’s most uplifting, both musically and in its message—a sax-laced anthem of reclamation: “I’m giving up on giving in.”