Dustin's Best of 2017, #14: Direct Hit! / PEARS - 'Human Movement'

Pop punk and hardcore punk are two of my favorite genres of music. My first musical obsession was Green Day, and after my uncle found I had started listening to punk rock (like a lot of people, after discovering Green Day I quickly moved to the Ramones and The Clash), he gave me copies of Group Sex and Complete Discography for my birthday. They're the two genres I've been listening to for nearly all of my life, and I'll have a special place for both of them in my heart.

That's what makes both Direct Hit! and PEARS so great in my mind. One moment they can be playing happy-go-lucky pop punk with a catchy sing-along chorus, and the next they're screaming their throats raw and breaking down. They're a perfect match for each other on this split LP. Sometimes I'm critical of split albums, but sometimes split albums are made up of previously released tracks and I can't help but wonder what the point of it is. Other times, I love split albums, and those times are when they're made up of brand new, or at least unreleased, songs. Human Movement is one of those latter types of splits.

Direct Hit!'s half contains some of my favorite songs of theirs since Brainless God, and for whatever reason it goes down as a whole a lot smoother than Wasted Mind did for me (I have nothing against that album. I think it has some particularly strong individual songs, but as a cohesive work it's easily my least listened to Direct Hit! album and that includes their early demo EPs and the More of the Same compilation). While they generally stay on the sugary side of their hardcore/pop punk hybrid, when they go all out, they go all out.

On the second half, PEARS continue to cement themselves in my mind as one of the most exciting bands in punk rock today. They riff hard, but they're not afraid to mix in a sweetly sung chorus or toss in musical shoutouts to their influences, as punk or un-punk as they might be ("Hey There, Begonia" features a quick "Wake up!" in the vein of System of a Down, "Mollusk's Mouth" ends with the opening riff of "Master of Puppets," and the breakdown of "Misery Conquers the World" starts off with a declaration of "let the bodies hit the floor"). One of my favorite moments on this record is their cover of Direct Hit!'s "The World Is Ending" because it as soon as the lyrics kick in, it's immediately apparent that it's hardly takes a direct approach to being a cover and becomes a medley of a couple Direct Hit! songs (and one Masked Intruder song) instead.

Seriously though, this shit is great. Fuck you, get pumped.

Listen to Human Movement below.

Recommended tracks: "You Got What You Asked For," "Blood on Your Tongue," "Shifting the Blame," "You're Nothing" (Direct Hit!), "Hey There, Begonia," "Misery Conquers the World," "The World Is Ending (Kinda)," "Never Now" (PEARS)