Debt Neglector are back with Kinda Rips, their third full-length album following 2021’s Dirty Water and 2017’s Atomicland, and not much has changed. This is a very good thing to hear if you’re a fan of fast, tight, straight-up punk rock with a dash of melody. If you need a comparison, I will just point to bassist and vocalist Alex Goldfarb’s previous bands – New Mexican Disaster Squad, Chemical Ache, and Gatorface – all excellent listens.

The opening two tracks, “Adios Amigos!” and “Clear Sight”, might be the band’s strongest 1-2 combo of songs to date. I found myself revisiting these songs the most out of the 13 songs that span the album’s running time of 35 minutes. Overall, everything presented here does in fact rip, but I do have a little less enthusiasm towards the middle of the album with “Evening News”, a mid-tempo jam featuring a lengthy guitar-based intro and multiple voice-over samples that stretches beyond four minutes. A few other songs also feature voice-over samples, and I feel like if these samples were left out, then a slightly shorter runtime of maybe 12 songs in 30 minutes, would have me spinning this album more in its entirety.

Kinda Rips is a solid album, but I would say it’s no more or less solid as the band’s previous two. I don’t hear a major progression or regression between any of their releases; everything is just really solid and solid is good. There aren’t a lot of new, straight-up punk albums being released these days, so I’m happy that Debt Neglector are continuing to serve something up.

--

You can listen to and buy a digital copy of the album (for the extremely fair price of $5.00 USD) here: https://debtneglector.bandcamp.com/album/kinda-rips