Hypnotic Smack is the new album from Knowso, the Cleveland punk duo featuring Nathan Ward (Cruelster, Perverts Again, the Carp) and Jayson Gerycz (Cloud Nothings). If you’ve heard Knowso’s music, you know they’re spiritual children of Devo, both in their proclivity toward dense and nervy rhythmic experimentation and in the way their lyrics turn a cracked, distorted mirror at the world and its many absurdities. Like the Fall’s best records, Hypnotic Smack attacks the body and the brain simultaneously, your hips jerking uncontrollably to the robotic pulse of “You Climb the Sphynx” and “Club Music is the Soundtrack” while your brain chews the koan-like cud of lyrical nuggets such as “every boss in America is a real estate agent.” Ward’s cryptic lyrics reflect the psychedelic labyrinth of horrors that is your daily doomscroll, but it’s OK… we can still dance the night away to “Panopticon,” the goth club dance anthem no one predicted Knowso would write. The world is full of punk bands that are great at pummeling you, but Hypnotic Smack is the rare punk record that beguiles and entrances.
