Pickle Jar – Plymouth, England, United Kingdom
Introducing Pickle Jar is easy enough if you were to simply and succinctly categorise their craft as short, fast and invariably loud. However, with a name as such, you have to ask yourself the question; is there more to it? Are THEY the jar? Are they trying to surmount the jar’s vice grip of a lid? Are the band themselves trapped inside the insurmountable Jar suspended in brin-amation, floating aimlessly, hopelessly alongside a myriad of inanimate mustard seeds and the intoxicating, pungently ubiquitous aroma of dill? Perhaps. However (but again) one thing we can ascertain outside of any of that superfluous metaphorical waffle, is that Pickle Jar are a fragrant (citation needed) new band hailing from the deep reaches of Plymouth.
From their close-knit scene, Pickle Jar let fly from their freshly loosened spherical opening within the last throes of 2022. Since then, from peculiar feuds with local mainstays, bills rife with DIY Punk and Hardcore health and what I would imagine has been an abundance of pickled foodstuffs, Pickle Jar have boasted their fantastically titled 7 Minutes In Vinegar (A Sour Experience) as a debut that is so much more than just it’s dose of playful, asinine humour.
Be it the groove-laden and abrasive metallic chug of ‘Take A Bow’ or the very same acting as connective tissue in the tightly knit yet scrappy D-Beat-adjacent ‘Black Dog’, there isn’t a moment where you’re not having fun on this debut. Extend that to the warped, gritty Psych-refrains of ‘Savages’ and its hard to deny how organically Pickle Jar are loading dread, frustration, observation and sardonic humour into a blender comprised entirely of evisceration-primed DIY-derived saw blades.
There’s so much more than your average cathartic DIY Punk on 7 Minutes In Vinegar (A Sour Experience). The authenticity quota has its box ticked and left behind, grinning as it chokes on the dust of an impressive variety of tempos, nods at comparatively melodic guitars and the seminal reach of riff-heavy “New York”-owed Hardcore over what actually results in less than the seven minutes advertised.
Does it matter? Not in the slightest. 7 Minutes In Vinegar (A Sour Experience) still follows its recipe and reaches in zenith on the Homophobia decrying ‘Dirty Mouth’ and the cranial turmoil of ‘Flow’. The formers’ stomp ‘core intro into a more UK-centric rumble complete with a energetic sparring session between axes and kit is a release high point with said sparring marking further apex finery within the tracks 0:55. The finalising ‘Flow’ is a flurry of jagged quirk-fuelled time signatures expunging the risk, as the EP does as a whole, of Hardcore bands focussing overwhelmingly on aggravated tempo. The frustration of ‘Flow’ is equated in its shifting, complacency-devoid spasmodic Punk, synchronised to the internal monologue’s strive for better.
After all, isn’t Hardcore about expression?
Introducing Pickle Jar, that’ll do. 7 Minutes In Vinegar (A Sour Experience) was released via Noise Merchant Records.
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