SHID - Masquerade
Masquerade feels misleading for SHID. It suggests some attempt to obscure or hide oneself which, across four sweltering tracks and accompanying remixes, SHID never does. A tangled mess of spry punk jeers and virulent spit, they instead announce themselves by the way of overdrive-laden, sing-along choruses ready for college radio primetime. It’s mesmeric; a cacophony of noise equally at home with the rough-cut garage rock of The Cramps or the sensuality laden grunge of Mudhoney.
“Just Call Me They”, the recently promoted intro to this revisitation of their debut EP, kicks things off. Boisterous and punchy, it rattles around your skull before launching into a chorus tailor made for Philly basement moshing. The shaken beer doesn’t have a chance to settle as SHID rolls into the titular “Masquerade”. More direct than its preceding sibling, it is seemingly SHID’s answer to Nirvana’s “Negative Creep”: a straight to video, barebones punk song meant to rile up the crowd just a little further.
However SHID is not just a run of the mill, basement mosh band. “Razor Bumps” brings the sex back to sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, offering a murky meditation on gender identity and desirability. On “Plz slz me”, SHID turns from pursued to pursuer as they bluntly declare “I wanna fuck somebody”. Guitars chug and swirl underneath while the drums and bass lock into a hip gyrating, seductive blur that highlights the potency of such a statement.
Amid a renewed wave of grunge worship and garage rock perversion that often comes off as reductive, insincere, and dry, SHID is a rare bright spot. Instead of beating that long dead horse, Masquerade breathes fresh life into it, thanks to an understanding of the angst and energy that drove Seattle’s initial boom. These themes are modernized through vulnerable, introspective, and often toe-tapping meditations on changing gender norms, romance, and being caught in the middle of all of it. If you miss the hey-day of fuzzed out punk-radio but can’t stand another minute of White Reaper’s shallow impersonations, then Masquerade may just be for you.
