Three One G Records

Listening to Holy Molar feels like a homecoming. Not in the school dance sense but like a return to self, a path back to what made you (“you” being “me” but maybe “you” is also “you” reading this and, if so, hey buddy).

Life is of course chaotic, shitty, and dumb. I firmly believe that in the midst of that it’s important to find ways to remember who you are, to rebuild your identity, and to embrace the rituals that made you.

I spend a lot of time looking for the things that made me who I am. Some of that comes in books, in films, and often my DNA is built up by records. When you lose sight of what built you… that’s when things go wrong. That’s when you need a homecoming.

John Cassavetes has a great quote I like about building a world and coming home:

“I try to find some kind of positive way to make the world exist like a family, make a family, not of us behind the camera, not of the actors, but of the characters, a world so that they can patrol certain streets, patrol their house, and they know their way home. And when they cease to know their way home, things go wrong. You somehow, drunk or sober or any other way, you always find your way back to where you live. And then you get detoured. And when you can’t find your way home, that’s when I consider it’s worth it to make a film. Because that’s interesting.”

Listening to Holy Molar’s Cavity Search EP 16 years after its release feels like walking back to the lab where I was created. It’s something I like to throw on late at night when the country out here is too quiet and when I need a little fuel. It’s a record of thorns, sleaze, humor, and speed.

With three quarters of the Locust (Justin Pearson, bass, Bobby Bray, keyboards, and Gabe Serbian on blistering, strange, absolute fuckin’ otherworldly guitar) you can’t help but hit bullseye. Add to that Mark McCoy (vocals, Charles Bronson, Das Oath) and Maxamillion Avila (drums, the Get Hustle, Heroin, Antioch Arrow), and Holy Molar feels like an intentional car wreck. It’s hardcore but of the Melt-Banana tribe—fast, squeaky, brutal, catchy, neon-tinged, cartoonish.

Each one of these songs is a fucking #1 grade-A USDA-approved hit. Listen to them, learn them, drink them down and piss them out onto a campfire, tattoo them on your tongue.

Cavity Search sounds like paint (and blood) splattering, LSD, cocaine, power tools shredding powerfully, and freaky alien logic that makes no sense at all. And home, yeah, above all else.

–Adam Gnade, author of The Internet Newspaper and After Tonight, Everything Will Be Different