Bitch Magnet Star Booty: An Album A Day

An Album A Day is posted 5 days a week, Monday-Friday

Today’s album and band are not the type of band you’ll find on many top 10 lists; hell you’ll be hard pressed to find anybody who’s heard of them who didn’t come up in the same scene as they did. Bitch Magnet were a three piece post hardcore band that often strayed into noise rock territory. I first discovered the band’s story through a book entitled Your Band Sucks that was written by the band’s guitarist Jon Fine; throughout the book, Fine tells the tale of his various experiences in bands with the first serious one being Bitch Magnet.

While the name might offend some people’s sensibilities it’s pretty much par for the course for the hardcore punk inspired indie scene that the band came up in. While both lead singer/ bassist Sooyoung Park  and Fine would go on to create more progressive minded music both within and without the band, Star Booty is a mostly straightforward rage filled rock fest of an album. Despite the obvious hardcore punk influences throughout the album, Star Booty does manage to be much more listenable than your average Minor Threat song.

Of the entire album the only track I’m not terribly fond of is Circle K as it snaps you out of the almost meditative state the rest of the album puts you in. Similarly to shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine I find that the wall of noise created by the heavily distorted guitar and bass becomes almost soothing after a while, as the noise just kind of washes over you.

While Carnation and Cantaloupe are good opening and closing tracks respectively, the strongest chunk of the album is from Chord through Knucklehead. Each of these songs flow together in such a way that they have the feel of one long musical piece, rather than four separate songs.

The version of this album that can be found on Itunes, Google Play and Spotify is a deluxe edition that includes remastered versions of other EPs and singles the band released. Of these the only one I find particularly good is Big Pining, but none of them are bad per se. Overall this is a killer noise rock and post hardcore album, and likely one of the most accessible in the noise rock genre for the uninitiated.
            Bitch Magnet have played a few reunion shows with other bands from the same indie scene and watching these guys play live brings the music to life in a whole other way from the studio recordings. Below I have embedded a video of them playing live in 2012 at the Knitting Factory.

Get The Album On Google Play

Get The Album On ITunes

Complete 3 Album Set On Amazon

Your Band Sucks by Jon Fine on Amazon (A Great Read)