Tampa punk band DRUG have teamed up with Miami, Florida indie label Crass Lips Records and Birmingham outfit JoyBoy for a split cassette due on May 16.
The opening track from the release — DRUG’s “Colonial Burial” — is exactly the kind of frenetic post-wave we’ve come to expect from frontman Jack Jallo and crew. Jallo, 23, recently told CL that finally putting it to tape was the best part of getting the song down.
“I feel songs kinda sit in this limbo between written and done until it's recorded and well, there's no real turning back,” Jallo wrote in a message, adding he’d been going back to the song over and over until he found the right feel for it. “I wanted it to sound orchestrated, yet in touch. You can't really force that so my only real option left was to keep going over it. I think that, in the end, it speaks for itself."
The track — engineered by Matt Ostraco at Dan Byers’ Rock Garden studios and mastered by Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios — is also the part of the last DRUG material featuring drummer Ralph Luke (aka Cap Luke), who recently moved to New York.
Guitarist Christian Costello says the band has a friend, Garrett St. Sauveur, playing drums as they play a run of Bay area summer shows with Sheer Mag (at Seminole Heights’ American Legion Post 111 on May 19) and Give (June 15 at Seminole's Lucky You Tattoo) before heading up the east coast on tour in July.
DRUG has also been asked to return to The Fest in Gainesville this October, which means their sound gets to spread out across the entire state for the rest of the year.
“Last year we were lucky enough to play two wild sets and always love when we get to hit Gainesville with all our friends from around the country,” Costello said about the Fest announcement, adding that he loved working with Crass Lip Records on the release. “Gladys and everyone at Crass Lip have all been so welcoming, and we're excited to be working with genuine hard working people like them.”
Call your local record store to see if they’ll have the cassette, and listen to a little bit of it below. Listen to more from Crass Lips Records on Bandcamp. See tour dates for both bands below the stream.
JoyBoy Tour Dates
05/22 Little Rock, AR *
05/23 Nashville, TN *
05/24 Birmingham, AL *
05/25 Asheville, NC *
05/26 Baltimore, MD *
05/27 Philadelphia, PA *
05/28 Richmond, VA *
05/29 Savannah, GA *
05/30 Tallahassee, FL*
05/31 Hattiesburg, MI *
06/1 New Orleans, LA *
06/2 Houston, TX *
* = w/ Amygdala
DRUG East Coast Tour07/9 St. Petersburg, FL
07/10 Atlanta, GA
07/11 Greensboro, NC
07/12 Philadelphia, PA
07/13 Brooklyn, NY
07/14 Richmond, VA
07/15 Savannah, GA
07/16 Gainesville, FL
