TLR 167: RIBS COLD RIBS LP, digital.
LP releases August 21, 2026. limited edition black vinyl LP - $25, limited tour edition purple vinyl - $28. LP and digital via RIBS bandcamp.
"No one likes it when trash makes a sound," shouts Mike Wallace five minutes into "Working in Shoes," the last track on the strangely confrontational and magnetic second album, COLD RIBS, from his band of post-punk form-fuckers, RIBS. Can you hear the smile and the sneer in his doubled voice, the line bouncing between speakers like lasers in a mirrored room, while the rhythm section lands as heavy as gnarled fists on a wooden table and the guitar stings like a newspaper headline so bad it gives you a headache? By this point, for nearly an hour, RIBS has served the sound of that garbage, delivering cold truths about this hot planet-the bad habits that hinder us, the inevitability of our existential suffering, the idiots empowered by weaponized technology, the corruption of things that once seemed cool because, well, they were in fact cool. Wallace and the rest of RIBS see the problems, and they want you to hear the sound that reality's trash makes-whether you like it or, especially, not.
COLD RIBS calls for a fun game of band genealogy: Is that The Fall and Faust echoing down the long hallway of opener "Decomp in the Field"? Maybe. And does the savage "High Fives of the Four Horsemen" feel like Fugazi dosed on just enough This Heat to you, too? Probably. And, wait, does "Cold Daylight" reimagine The Rolling Stones in 2026 as a band not still trying to peddle young-men bullshit but squaring up to the real world? Hopefully. But the real thing to know about RIBS-Wallace, who cuts vitriol with a vocabulary full of winks; guitarist Finn Cohen, who loves riffs and their opposite; drummer Josh Germeroth and bassist David Mueller, who know exactly when to punch hard or pull back - is that they have been writing records in other bands in North Carolina's influential scene for a long time. They know by now the way that rock 'n' roll, however slanted and strangling it seems, is a pressure valve for bleeding off the strain of these times, even if it doesn't fix anything.
"What used to scare me is no longer frightening/No, not anymore," Wallace speak-sings on repeat during "Strange Victories," landing a hook that feels as unlikely as a rainbow in a snowstorm. "Whatever's coming is coming for you and me/So open that door." Into the void we go, then, RIBS and us, us and RIBS.
-Grayson Haver Currin, 2026-