Gaytheist
The Mustache Stays
HEX
“The voices in my head said, ‘Shut up!’” Jason Rivera screams into our ears on “Pyrohydra,” the seventh track on the seventh album by Gaytheist. It’s that unwavering intensity, emanating from the vocalist and guitarist like rancid sweat and stench during a bad case of the DTs, that continues to power the noise/sludge/hardcore torchbearers to bring to this record equal ferocity, fearlessness, and foolishness as they did on their first one some 14 years ago. For that matter, the trio hasn’t ever really faltered in quality and reliability during that time frame, although their latest comes five years after their last release—the band’s longest break between records.
It’s impossible to say the name of Gaytheist’s new album with a straight face, but The Mustache Stays is an early-in-the-year gift for anyone seeking a seething, scathing, and searing 32 minutes of utter mayhem delivered in good hands. The record’s sequencing speaks to the project on the whole: The first five songs are about two minutes long on average, bursts of giddiness reminiscent of the initial, exciting/anxious moments spent with a friend you haven’t seen in way too long. It’s all good fun—much like the kind Red Fang and Cancer Bats have—with about a 60 to 40 ratio of punk-rock to pop-punk. But Gaytheist’s brilliance proves once again to be Rivera’s lyricism, which nullifies any argument that the band should be written off as unserious. “I slither before you / Consumed only with wrath / Now in my final form / I cannot take it back / Your words of ridicule and scorn empower me,” he sings on “Final Form” amid a storm of angular guitars and a downright gnarly rhythm section.
The Mustache Stays chugs along nicely until—and Gaytheist have some explaining to do here—they turn the steering wheel as hard as they possibly can with a cover of Smashing Pumpkins’ “Silverfuck.” It’s not that the band doesn’t pull off a decent rendition, but it’s as if they plopped a meandering digression at the juncture where The Mustache Stays could’ve been a great album and not just a good one. Even more than that, the cover is totally out of character for at least the record, if not the Gaytheist project more broadly. Leave such cover songs like those to Mutoid Man, whose Stephen Brodsky expertly revisits them with tongue much more firmly planted in cheek.
Does the “Silverfuck” cover totally sabotage The Mustache Stays? Of course not. Once one gets over the distraction, the last three songs on the record can clearly be seen as a meritorious EP in their own right. “Modern Surgery” is Gaytheist’s sludgiest track on the record, which to some listeners will equate to its best. “Miniscule” is a tidier and more melodic response to the prior track. And the trio end the record on a strong note with “Brave the Storm,” which includes the lyrics: “There’s nothing you can say, there’s nothing you can do / When the nightmare is unleashed on you.” Strong words to end a strong record.
