Transaction/Service by This Is Wreckage

Simultaneous increases in digital dopamine addiction and strict traditional values cleave our generational experience in two, sending our collective id and ego into fierce, uncomfortable opposition. Assembling a historical narrative with modern sounds to address these emerging experiences, Welsh noise rock band This Is Wreckage presents Transaction/Service, a blisteringly heavy, cavernously dark musical experience. The record loosely tells a story of a supposedly straight-laced businessman in the 70s who lives a secret double life of debaucherous partying in gritty warehouses, schisming his personality into components that respectively find acceptance in stuffy conference rooms and queer dance parties. Though such an existence feels relatively plausible today, the record’s 70s setting and the narrator’s constant lyrical struggle with shame remind us of the situation’s precarity. As public and private lives once again diverge amid an era of frenzied, manufactured reactionary culture, this record’s over-the-top riffing, gothic harmonics, and vocal angst feel ever more familiar despite their primary function as historical testament.