Sometimes, what you need is just some mean, angry music to get you through the day. Everybody knows what I mean: there are those days where getting out of bed, and every step from then on, is a total pain in the ass, where your eyelids are constantly drooping and that spell of half-awake morning grumpiness just never seems to go away. These are the times where one must turn to their “comfort food” music and vent their frustration through something mean and groovy; days like these are why bands like Harms Way and Black Tongue exist. Everyone has their select few bands that they turn to for easing the burden of a truly shitty day, and now, Wrong want to be added to that list.
Wrong is like the meaner, more antisocial cousin to Torche: both take short, driving sludge riffs and drench them in reverb and distortion, drawing as much of their influence from noise rock and punk as they do from the genre they more typically call home. Often utilizing washed-out, screaming leads and echoing vocals alongside their crunchy guitars and pounding drums to further create a very, very specific vibe and mood, where Torche seeks to recall the lighthearted beauty and joy of the first days of spring, Wrong cares more about conjuring up images of your crappiest day at the factory, jaw clenched in anger and brow furrowed in a mixture of tired exasperation and bored indifference. Even though this is only their debut, Wrong shows a band that’s already mighty confident in just what they want to be and exactly what sort of response they want their music to elicit, and they certainly know just how to bring those emotions out through their mix of burly tough-guy vocals and instrumentation that finds a good blend between heart-quickening anger and plodding, sludgy frustration.
Of course, the downside to having such a dialed-in sound already means that Wrong has lost their chance to experiment and throw some curveballs on here. Once you’ve heard any of the tracks on here, you’ve pretty much heard them all, and while that’s not terrible for the “angry background music” vibe they’re going for, it’s easy to let this album just fade into obscurity after a few listens. Nothing is particularly compelling or engaging past the first listen; after three or four go-rounds there are a few select tracks that stand out but the rest of Wrong isn’t really anything to write home about. Their style is so rigidly defined and under such tight control that everything is entirely predictable.
The curse of Wrong is that it sits in that grey area between “decent” and “good.” No tracks are bad, but it just all sounds the same. There are no left hooks to be found anywhere on this album, and as such, there’s no space for this admittedly talented band to express themselves in a meaningful way. Perhaps a sophomore album will help them further define their sound and branch outwards from their “blue collar sludge rock” sound, but this debut is passable, nothing more and nothing less.
Wrong – Wrong gets…
