VIAL - Loudmouth LP (Indie Exclusive, Pink & Orchid Splatter Vinyl)

Label: Get Better

Finding your voice is one thing, finding your voice in a group is another. Formed in 2019 and releasing debut LP Grow Up to critical acclaim the same year, being crowned Best New Band by their hometown’s City Pages the next, and charming a growing audience on TikTok on the road to their sophomore album. VIAL thrives on uneven odds. It’s what their indie-punk anthems shout for best: subverting the male gaze by ignoring it altogether, creating DIY-or-die communities that proclaim the future is queer, and dialling into a sound that nods lovingly to non-male fury past and present. Sophomore LP Loudmouth has plenty of landmarks for embarrassing unremarkable losers.

Producer Henry Stoehr (Slow Pulp) approaches the band’s core tenacity with an open heart, unleashing energy informed by guts, not necessarily genre. After all, this is an album that begins with a track like “Ego Death,” a venomous punk track that dips in and out of carnivalesque pacing. With Loudmouth, the quartet reclaims what it means to be ringmaster. And in VIAL’s three-ring circus, they have no room for clowns.