Album Review: Lord Silky, 'We Used to Be Friends' 

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• Lord Silky, We Used to Be Friends

(Knitting My Doom Records, digital download)

I don't know about you, but I have a sort of lever in my head. Some part of my subconscious activates it, and the specific purpose of the lever is to adjust my brain for shifting dynamics in music. Say, if a DJ plays some Fleet Foxes on the radio, the lever is at a nice gentle two, and I'm kicking back, thinking about wildflowers and mountains.

When I listen to Lord Silky's new album, We Used to Be Friends, that lever maxes out and stays in the red for 10 tracks of liver-damaging catharsis. I suddenly recall that time I let a friend talk me into drinking Everclear at a party full of assholes and, man, I get where this record is coming from.

"Alcohol Injection" opens the record with a song about overcoming addiction through faith. I'm kidding. It's about getting fucked up. Most of We Used to Be Friends is about getting fucked up or betrayed — or thumb wrestling. And you know what? It works.

Lord Silky are not subtle. They are a nonstop ball of thrash, epitomized by vocalist Josh Cause, who bellows atop punishing riffs from guitarist Eric Czado and a rhythm section laying down perfect, by-the-book hardcore devastation. J. Clemons and Robbie Destro — on bass and drums, respectively — are locked in and drive forward relentlessly.

Justin Crowther, formerly of Waylon Speed, lends a writing assist to "A.T.L." a breakneck-speed demon of a song, that features Cause counting off, "One, two, fuck you!"

It's important for a scene like Burlington's — which boasts some true talent but remains sample-size — to have authenticity in their bands. Without naming names, I remember another music writer inviting me to check out a local indie-rock band that he thought was as "good as anything coming out of NYC." I went to see them and found four University of Vermont students doing a bad impression of better acts, a generic diet soda of a band.

Lord Silky, on the other hand, deliver the real-deal, holy-feel thrash. Listen to "Creeps" — my runaway favorite track on the LP — and feel the tightness of the band, the kind of dynamic whiplash that can only come from putting in the hours, doing the work, drinking and making noise in a freezing room in the dead of winter. That's how you make a hardcore album, boys and girls.

There is no mellow number here. The record knows exactly what it is and goes about being just that: 45 minutes of barely controlled aggression, swagger and fun. Oh, and stick around after the final song, "Water & Blood" — a hidden track awaits.

We Used to Be Friends by Lord Silky is available at lordsilky.bandcamp.com.