There are days when even the rational mind must conclude that subtlety has become an optional extra and subtlety is most certainly not on the menu for Texas punk band The Secret Plan with their EP “Word Weapons” stopping just short of a full on sonic assault.
This being punk American style, the political seasoning beloved of UK punk bands is mostly sidestepped and duly smothered instead by an adrenaline fuelled combination of garage rock influences and concentrated nihilism. These eight songs are not therefore designed to put you on the path to spiritual enlightenment yet there is still something uplifting, and perhaps even theatrical, about the way The Secret Plan layer on riff after riff as if to disguise rather than complement the twisted words lurking just beneath the surface.
Yet twisted they are and, in these days of recycled plastic pop music, that makes The Secret Plan distinctly refreshing and I do not doubt that, with the addition of a beer or ten, you would be more than happy to find yourself in the same basement as them and, even if you miss the message in their words, at least you would be there when The Secret Place kicked down the walls. Walls. Now there’s another optional extra.
Available from Bandcamp and the usual digital places.