Label: What’s Your Rupture?
Released: 11th March 2022
There are a million and one reasons to feel disillusioned, what with the slow decline of society playing out in front of us every day. New York art-punk creatives BODEGA haven’t let it get them down; instead, they’ve channelled it into their punchy second album, ‘Broken Equipment’, which fires direct shots at the capitalist hellscape with pinpoint precision. Born out of the band’s philosophy book club meetings from early 2020, ‘Broken Equipment’ sees BODEGA applying their iconic bass grooves with lyrics even sharper than those of their debut release.
There’s no question that the lyrical partnership of vocalists Ben Hozie and Nikki Belfiglio are the most formidable weapon in the BODEGA arsenal. Brandishing tongues firmly in their cheeks and metaphorical middle fingers confidently on display, they take aim at the ever burdening pressure to be productive in ‘Doers.’ “Innovation waits for no man, unless I lose my dongle,” sings Ben, perfectly satirising the impotence that lies behind the industrious veneer of the cripplingly productive among us. “Craven is the island that we all come from,” they sing in ‘NYC (Disambiguation)’, epitomising a generation’s disenchantment to American patriotism when poring over its history.
Despite being rooted in profound philosophy, ‘Broken Equipment’ doesn’t suffer from being too cerebral, thanks to the unceasing punk energy that transforms the album into a beer chucking mosh pit regular’s dream. BODEGA have done all the heavy reading and pondering for us by translating their theses into these fully loaded tracks. This lives as proof that the Beat Generation lives on, only now taking the form of artistic, anti-establishment punk rock – a movement that BODEGA are no doubt leading with confidence.
