From Astoria to the Alleyways of 80s LA: Beta Voids Channel the Spirit of West Coast Punk on Scrape It Off
Somewhere between the flailing limbs of early LA hardcore and the sax-stabbed chaos of no wave, Astoria, Oregon’s Beta Voids are busy making noise that doesn’t care what you think. Their debut EP, Scrape It Off, sounds like a busted tape deck loaded with Redd Kross riffs, Contortions paranoia, and enough caffeine to keep a circle pit going until dawn. It’s the kind of record that smells faintly of beer, hairspray, and old xerox ink, a perfect relic of a scene that never really died, just relocated to a damp coastal basement. Across Scrape It Off, Mandy Grant and Carrie Beveridge front the storm with twin-voiced intensity, a volley of shrieks, sneers, and sly melodic hooks that recall Poly Styrene and Penelope Houston with the voltage cranked dangerously high. Every track is its own small riot, a sweaty mix of jagged guitars, sax chaos, and drums that sound like they were recorded in the back of a van doing eighty down a hill. The whole record feels like a scene ripped from Suburbia: grainy, half-lit, and alive with that doomed sense of teenage immortality.
The album is full of chaotic, adrenaline-soaked punk that nods to Redd Kross, Black Flag, and James Chance, while spinning out into its own dangerous orbit. “Baby’s In Detox” is a wild, two-minute collision of screeching sax and tangled guitar, a panic attack with rhythm and a smirk, where the dual vocals trade off like a fight breaking out in stereo. “M-O-T-H-E-R” swings harder into straight-ahead rock, with a grimy Iggy and the Stooges pulse and a bassline that sounds like it’s trying to escape the mix. It sits somewhere between Vancouver’s Subhumans and The Sonics, a nasty middle ground of sneer and stomp. Meanwhile, “Brain Malfunction” packs the furious chops of Angry Samoans and the twitchy swing of The Minutemen, like a gear-shifting punk car chase scored by caffeine and bad decisions.