Milwaukee’s Galactic Cannibal have been getting two things mentioned about them, near as I can tell: first, they’re a side project from Direct Hit!’s guitarist and singer Nick Woods. Second, they sound a lot like Dillinger Four. The first point is relevant to the second, because Direct Hit! sounds nothing like D4, and I’m always a big fan of side projects when they don’t sound like a slightly tweaked version of the main draw (see also: everything Ben Weasel has ever done).
The title to Galactic Cannibal’s LP, We’re Fucked is pretty indicative of the band’s bleak worldview. These are harsh songs, delivered less by singing than by declamatory bark. It’s energetic, and moves forward briskly, but it is relentlessly unpleasant.
Strange aside — on my second or third listen through We’re Fucked, I was wandering up and down the stairs in my house and could at one point only hear the high end of the vocals. It still sounded pissed, if indistinct. It’s kind of a metaphor for the whole album, really: a sense of not being good enough, but never quite knowing why.
The LP comes in an amazing sleeve, which is neon pink and black ink screened onto day-glo yellow card stock. It’s certainly eye-catching. You can snag limited colored vinyl on either pink or lime green from their Bandcamp page, as well as from one of the labels putting it out — Underground Communique Records, Lost Cat Records, Encapsulated Records, and Hewhocorrupts, Inc.