21+ $5
PLAQUE MARKS: Founded by three veterans of Philly’s punk and hardcore scenes, whose current and recent bands include Creepoid, Fight Amp, and Ecstatic Vision, Plaque Marks pound out the rawest, most caustic music any of these musicians has ever made. The band is the self-proclaimed “stain on the smile of the Philadelphia music scene.”
In Plaque Marks, these guys have abandoned all semblance of “finely tuned,” “sun-baked,” and “melodic,” in favor of pure abrasion and bad living. Caveman drumming, tooth-rattling bass, painfully distorted guitars, and buried yells are the elements at play here, and on debut EP Anxiety Driven Nervous Worship they sound like they were recorded with one lone mic, hanging from a noose in a Philly warehouse.

Plaque Marks credit Texas legends Rusted Shut and Cherubs for inspiration, as well as the early works of contemporaries Pissed Jeans – and while some of the members’ other work, particularly Fight Amp, resides in this ballpark too, Plaque Marks take it to new depths. This is noise-rock in its simplest and most corrosive state, and Anxiety Driven Nervous Worship is right at home on Minneapolis label Learning Curve Records, responsible for releases by Vaz, Hammerhead, and Gay Witch Abortion.