I don’t like being “that guy.” You know, the pedantic, nitpicky person who fusses over the minor details to the complete exclusion of the big picture? The person who uses what the kids call “#actually.” Nobody likes that guy. So, when I played the first song on LOS BUNGALITOS “Quick and Dirty” EP, “Antiquated Modernity”, after seeing it described as “thrash” and heard very-well executed modern hardcore, I naturally rolled my eyes and thought, “Hoo boy. Another hardcore band full of millennials who grew up listening to NAILS and maybe saw MUNICIPAL WASTE once calling themselves ‘thrash’ without any idea of the history. Gawd! Do they even know KREATOR, or HIRAX, or NUCLEAR ASSAULT’s ‘Handle with Care’ which was given props in the first Bill and Ted movie??!! Harrumph!! Pfft! (eye roll emoji).”

However, in the twenty seconds it took me to compose that self-satisfied thought, the EP moved on to song two, “Deception,” and the smugness was immediately wiped off of my face by a brutal guitar solo and thundering double bass kicks. LOS BUNGALITOS didn’t stop there. “Vassals of Innovation” somehow combined hardcore, thrash, grindcore and fucking dance music into one 1:12 song!? Then the whole thing ends with the song “Esto no es una canción de Los Crudos” (translation: “This is not a Los Crudos Song”) and I realize I’m an asshole. Lowell MA’s LOS BUNGALITOS are as much thrash as they are hardcore. They’re as much NUCLEAR ASSAULT as they are LOS CRUDOS. And they’re whatever else they feel like tossing into a song at any moment.

Labels are for food, not bands. If every band stuck rigidly to one sound and never, ever, ever, varied from it, we’d never have any innovation and us fans of heavy music would still be wearing giant, hi-top shoes and sporting gross, pre-pubescent mustaches. LOS BUNGALITOS are a celebration of everything that rules about music that makes you want to pick up change, or bang your head, or do kickflips, or worship Satan. And for that, I salute them. But I think the word you were looking for is “vessels” not “vassals.” Ahem.