Holy Molar: Cavity Search

Holy Molar shares three members and a spazz-punk-metal aesthetic with the Locust, and its new 10-minute, five-song EP will not shock anyone familiar with the other band. It’s kind of a goofy aesthetic, though, incorporating dental metaphors and scatological humor alongside tricky time changes, metal howls, and submerged bits of melody. You could dismiss track titles like ” You’ve Had More Kids Pulled Out of That Thing Than a Burning Orphanage” and “My Saturday Night Fever Turned Into a Sunday Morning Rash” as juvenile, but that’s just a front to obscure how difficult these brief and shocking cuts are. The title cut kicks off with a Blood, Sweat and Tears sample, introduces a spooky theremin-like whine. There’s a harsh, metal “Wahhh!” like a guy falling off a cliff, but instead of the monster guitar chords, the riff comes from a cheese-tastic synthesizer. I count at least five time changes in one minute forty-two seconds, every one of them executed as clean and sharp as a knife. Later, on “You’ve Had More Kids”, the vibe turns Ex-Model dance-y, which is to say spazz-disco for epileptics, but kind of fun. There are fragments of damaged melody slipped into the corners of all five tracks, tantalizing, but blink and you’ll miss them. Records like Cavity Search are not for everyone, but you have to admire the skill. This is way more difficult than it looks.