A soft guitar and broken bar piano intro. “Hell yeah,” I thought to myself. Then came the vocals. I laughed. Hard. To call frontman Kory Gregory’s shrill yell “rough” would be like calling your typical Beverly Hills resident “wealthy”: it’s a bit of an understatement. Only 50 seconds into the album I almost turned it off. Almost.

And I’m glad I stuck with it, because otherwise I would have missed one of the best releases of this year. This is not your average ho-hum sophomore effort, instead the work of a band hitting their stride. Interestingly, much of the genius behind Cosmic Thrill Seekers is immediately inaccessibility. After multiple listens, the disparity between the vocals and the supporting instrumentation goes from absurd to just plain brilliant. The rough-hewn shrieks, which hack through the softer, often melodic guitar and percussion, perfectly characterize the emotions surrounding the stoner-protagonist at the center of the three-act saga that is Cosmic Thrill Seekers. Anxiety. Anger. Frustration. Depression. Paranoia. It is all rawly present in Gregory’s bloodied cries that ring throughout the album amidst the surrounding, almost suffocating benevolence of the outside world that the instrumentation represents.

The Wizard of Oz. Mental health. Space travel. Cosmic Thrill Seekers covers an assorted span of topics that only a concept album about a bad acid trip could.

Yet, just when the protagonist lulls into a false sense of comfort and satisfaction, the world starts collapsing in around him and a wailing riff and pounding drumbeat send him headlong into the next episode of this over 40-minute saga. And what a saga it is. The Wizard of Oz. Mental health. Space travel. Cosmic Thrill Seekers covers an assorted span of topics that only a concept album about a bad acid trip could. Even the musical influences are all over the place. The (nearly) title track sounds like it could have been ripped off of Weezer’s Blue Album, while “Breather” harkens back to early-2000’s new wave revivalists like Phoenix. Nonetheless, the transitions between songs are seamless, melding the album into one continuous dream (or nightmare, depending on your perspective). Notably, the electric pickup from the end of “I Lost My Life” blends perfectly into the distorted riff of “Lauren (Track 2)”, and “Dream Nails” goes full steam into “C’Mon & Smoke Me Up”, not unlike “HELLLLHOOOOLE” into “June 21” on the latter half of fellow punk Jeff Rosenstock’s sophomore masterwork Worry.

The closing track, “Wacky Misadventures of the Passenger”, much like “A Certain Romance” on the Arctic Monkeys’ seminal debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, is the perfect punk closer. A saga within the saga, it features several tempo changes, building and building into a crescendo that eventually settles with an air of finality...and the exact same acoustic riff that opens the album. Three acts and two-thirds of an hour later, our stoner-turned-hero goes on an epic adventure and finds himself more self-aware, wiser (maybe), more cynical, and, at the end of it all, back on the same basement couch where he started.

Writer: Zack Holden