CVC’S UNDERGROUND RUNDOWN 006: TEAR DUNGEON, Or Best Offer, Crate, Radderall
Some records come crashing into your life at the right time while others crawl through the wreckage, chase literary rabbit holes, or leave you staring at a screen wondering what the hell just happened. The underground is a beautiful mess of big ideas, limitless feelings, and people refusing to color inside the lines.
On this week's Underground Rundown, we're bouncing between Austin's politically charged punk, Brooklyn's long-brewing indie rock, a New York duo twisting personal introspection into experimental noise, and Cleveland's darker shade of psych rock. Buckle up. Things get weird.
TEAR DUNGEON - Squirming Under the Skin of Respectability
TEAR DUNGEON don't exactly give off the impression of a band that wants to be invited back for a second performance. The Austin punks have built their identity around confrontation, theatrical absurdity, and a healthy disregard for good manners. Released through TODO Records, their latest full-length, Squirm, keeps that attitude intact while giving the band's political frustrations plenty of room to breathe.
Across twelve tracks, the band hones in its confrontational punk sensibility and takes aim at police brutality, religious hypocrisy, and the machinery that keeps serving us the same old abuses under different names. Their music is appropriately abrasive. Tapping into a classic hardcore urgency that gets dragged through sludge, noise rock, and heady riffs, their songs don't spend much time dressing up their grievances.
Take songs like "Burn Your Money"or "Charlie Kirk's Neckhole Fleshlight" for example. The band's taste for provocation can be part of the spectacle, but Squirm has more on its mind than simply getting a reaction.
For fans drawn to punk that switches it up, there's plenty to dig into here. Their collision of hardcore aggression and grimy, abrasive textures, gives the record a sonic bite that matches the hostility of its subject matter.
There's also a lineage of theatrical punk and metal running through Tear Dungeon's approach, bringing to mind the likes of GWAR, where vulgar imagery, grotesque humor, and over-the-top antics become another way to skewer the powers that be.
The shock value isn't just here for cheap laughs; it's part of the commentary, using absurdity as a weapon to expose the true ugliness hiding behind respectable appearances.
This balance is what makes Tear Dungeon worth keeping on your radar. They're willing to push things into uncomfortable territory, so trust there's a point beneath the jest. Squirm lets listeners scratch that itch.
There's a recognizable frustration underneath it, or better yet, a defiant callout aimed at the institutions and public figures responsible for our global issues. Tear Dungeon's approach makes room for absurdity without losing sight of what deserves to be taken seriously. Sheer shock and awe to the highest degree.
FFO: Melvins, GHOUL, Negative Approach
Or Best Offer - Who's Really Holding the Reins?
New York duo Or Best Offer have been finding new ways to bend their musical chemistry since crossing paths in 2018, letting the project evolve through a handful of different incarnations along the way.
They're currently gearing up to release, It Will Appear, on January 15 through Good English Records. Its first single, "Fast Strong Horse," gives us an early glimpse into the duo's more adventurous instincts, trading familiar songwriting conventions for something a little harder to pin down.
Electric drones and an eerie guitar tone kick things off, flowing forward in a way that refuses to settle into any familiar rhythm. Grace Schmidhauser's vocals soon enter the mix as Brian Culligan weaves between drums and electronics, pushing the song into stranger territory.
Forget the usual verse-and-chorus formula; this song twists and shifts as it goes, building its momentum through layers of texture, tension, and unexpected turns.
The title takes its wording from the closing lines of Clarice Lispector's novel Near to the Wild Heart. That literary connection isn't incidental. Schmidhauser has described the song as an attempt to reclaim agency and dignity while feeling disconnected from herself. Its lyrics move through dreams, geography, shame, and identity; touchy subjects that can become abstract in the wrong hands.
There's a particular kind of vulnerability in making a song when you realize you've become a stranger to yourself. "Fast Strong Horse" doesn't offer a simple answer to that feeling. Instead, its shifting arrangement gives the uncertainty room to develop.
Or Best Offer's previous album, Center, provides another entry point for listeners curious about the duo's evolving work. With It Will Appear on the horizon, this is a good time to get acquainted.
FFO: Slint, Frankie Cosmos, Palehound
Crate - Three Years in the Making, No Easy Exit
Brooklyn's Crate took the scenic route to its self-titled debut. Arriving November 13 through Good English Records, the album spawned from roughly three years of writing and recording across apartments, practice spaces, and a Queens studio.
The band's indie and shoegaze foundations give the record room to stretch, but the writing is often more intimate than the genre's reputation might suggest. "Not My Song (Mine to Keep)" digs into the anxiety and emotional aftermath of a relationship beyond repair, while "Watch You Turn" wrestles with the versions of people we dream up before getting to know who they really are. "Crushed to Nothing" takes a harder look at the frustration of wanting to pull someone out of their own struggles, only to realize that some changes have to come from within.
We all deal with these messy emotional situations and Crate doesn't appear interested in pretending otherwise. The songs examine the distance between what we want from other people and what they're actually able, or willing, to give. Rather than reaching for easy answers, the band lets these feelings remain unresolved, capturing the awkward stretch between recognizing what's broken and figuring out what comes next.
The record also brings together producers Cody Hudgins and TJ Freda of Gift, whose involvement adds another point of connection to Brooklyn's independent music community. After earlier releases including "Julia" and "Necklace," the self-titled album marks a substantial step forward for a band that's been quietly assembling its identity over time.
FFO: Duster, Bleary Eyed, Teen Suicide
Radderall - Everything Is Perfect. Stop Looking at the Screen.
Radderall have their sights set on the strange disconnect between witnessing a world in crisis and carrying on as if nothing happened. The Cleveland psych duo, Zach Taneyhill and Jonny McAllister, channel that uneasy tension into a sound that pulls listeners out of their daily routines and forces a closer look at the suffering we so often learn to tune out.
“Everything Is Perfect” draws you in with an easygoing mix of country-tinged guitar, vintage synths, and a steady, looping drum pattern. It starts off with a sun-soaked feel, yet the title carries a quiet irony. As the song unfolds, that pleasant exterior begins to crack, revealing the unease hiding beneath its picture-perfect surface.
This single highlights the absurdity of living in a society trained to absorb catastrophe at the speed of a scroll, where war crimes, political violence, and human suffering compete for a few seconds of outrage before the next headline takes their place.
One atrocity flashes across the screen, gets buried beneath the next headline, and the world keeps spinning. We’re not exactly starved for information; we’re drowning in it, watching one fresh disaster after another until the unthinkable starts passing for business as usual.
That’s the sick trick of the endless news cycle. It keeps the horrors coming while training us to look away.
The accompanying video, directed and edited by Taneyhill alongside Isaac Bixel, drives the song’s unease home through a collage of old television imagery and archival footage from the Vietnam War. A countdown ticks down, only to reset and begin again, giving the footage a full circle quality that feels uncomfortably familiar. The images keep coming, the clock keeps restarting, and the spectacle of war becomes just another broadcast we’re expected to watch and move on from.
Radderall's history has taken a few stylistic turns, moving through dream pop, shoegaze, glam rock, lo-fi R&B, and psychedelic indie. Taneyhill and McAllister have also traded GarageBand recordings and collaborated with Muzzy Fossa on The Club Is Open. That restless creative energy continues to shape their work, giving the duo room to follow unexpected detours without settling into one sound. “Everything Is Perfect” plays a clever little trick, dressing its critique of our desensitized society in a deceptively sweet disguise.
FFO: Spaceface, Part Time, Portugal. The Man
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