After an excellent demo, the debut LP from this Chicago punk band. Our take: Debut vinyl from this Chicago punk band. I liked their demo tape from 2016 so I was excited to hear this, and it does not disappoint. While Porno Glows features the former vocalist of Big Zit, I wouldn’t describe them as a hardcore band. Instead, they remind me of second-wave UK punk bands like the Users, the Cortinas, or the Killjoys. Like those bands, Porno Glows sounds like a rock band playing straightforward, high-energy rock-and-roll (rather than any particular punk sub-genre), and also like those bands there’s a near-total lack of pretension in the way Porno Glows present themselves. They just sound like a band making songs, and if you take the time to listen to them closely, you’ll hear that those songs are superb. The riffs are often simple, but they put together the songs in clever and engaging ways with great bass lines and memorable lyrics. It’s a shame that Porno Glows don’t seem to have a clear stylistic home in the 2019 punk scene, because they’re making punk rock that sounds timeless.
