Tellingly, Austin’s best punk album of 2017 comes with a pack of Stay Hard Beaded Cockrings. Welcome to the blatantly offensive universe of Worm Suicide, winners of this year’s Austin Music Award in said same genre. A mid-Nineties Victoria hardcore outfit reformed when singer Pablo Flores and guitarist/vocalist Scott Free found themselves relocated to post-millennial Austin, and now these darlings of the former Bull McCabe’s scene amp the comic, antisocial snotcore of Fear and the Meatmen to ridiculous levels of aggression. Clean, full production lets the quintet’s high-speed, sub-metal riffs blaze with articulation and clarity, so Flores barks his hilariously nasty lyrics with maximum sonic impact: “Now you wear a fanny pack, bring a diaper bag onstage” (“Babies Ruin Bands”). Too Hung to Fall in Love also features one of Worm Suicide’s trademark thrash-ups of an Eighties synth-pop hit, in this case Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record).”

***.5

This article appears in December 1 • 2017.

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Tim Stegall contributed to The Austin Chronicle 1991-1995, and was a staff writer 1995-1997. He returned as a contributor in 2013. He has also freelanced for publications ranging from Flipside to Alternative Press to Guitar World. He plays punk rock guitar and sings in the Hormones.