Great Deceivers Are Crawling on All Fours Again on “Punchline”

It’s the latest single from the Chicago group’s self-titled final album.
Great Deceivers Are Crawling on All Fours Again on “Punchline”

It’s the latest single from the Chicago group’s self-titled final album.

Words: Mike LeSuer

April 27, 2021

After about a decade together, Chicago’s Great Deceivers recently announced they’ll be calling it quits after the release of their self-titled record, which finally drops this week. While the local post-hardcore scene will surely miss the collective, the good news is the group’s various factions will continue to put out music via different outlets—not least of which, the band boasts members of C.H.E.W. and Options, not to mention the latter’s Seth Engel recording and/or performing on a prolific number of releases over the past year within and outside of the Chicago scene.

The third single from Great Deceivers arrives today just a few days before the record officially drops, with the lurching “Punchline” landing somewhere between the raucous post-hardcore of labelmates Slow Mass and the mathy progression of Shell of a Shell (hey, guess who recorded that album!). Meanwhile, vocalist Max Green recounts something of a rebirth over the instrumentation: “‘Punchline’ is sort of a conversation between two parts of one person after something destabilizing happens,” he shares. “Trying to come to terms with going to ground, looking at the need to slip away and escape for a while as an opportunity to plot, rather than a punishment or something to feel ashamed of. Maybe even as a chance to embrace, explore, and learn to work with a part of yourself you’ve tried to run from or hide.

“‘Punchline’ is probably among my top three or five favorite songs we’ve ever written,” he continues. “It’s been kicking around for a long time—I think the bones of the song were written in 2015 or so. The fact that it germinated for so long before we recorded it I think gave the song space to become something that to me sounds like a blend of all of our individual styles as musicians, and also has glimpses of the sound of our band from different points in our existence.”

Hear the track below, and pre-order Great Deceivers here