BETA VOIDS Channel the Spirit of West Coast Punk on ‘Scrape It Off’
From Astoria to the Alleyways of 80s LA: Beta Voids Channel the Spirit of West Coast Punk on Scrape It Off
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Somewhere between the flailing limbs of early LA hardcore and the sax-stabbed chaos of no wave, Astoria, Oregon’s Beta Voids are busy making noise that doesn’t care what you think. Their debut EP, Scrape It Off, sounds like a busted tape deck loaded with Redd Kross riffs, Contortions paranoia, and enough caffeine to keep a circle pit going until dawn.
It’s the kind of record that smells faintly of beer, hairspray, and old xerox ink, a perfect relic of a scene that never really died, just relocated to a damp coastal basement.
Across Scrape It Off, Mandy Grant and Carrie Beveridge front the storm with twin-voiced intensity, a volley of shrieks, sneers, and sly melodic hooks that recall Poly Styrene and Penelope Houston with the voltage cranked dangerously high. Every track is its own small riot, a sweaty mix of jagged guitars, sax chaos, and drums that sound like they were recorded in the back of a van doing eighty down a hill.
The whole record feels like a scene ripped from Suburbia: grainy, half-lit, and alive with that doomed sense of teenage immortality.
The album is full of chaotic, adrenaline-soaked punk that nods to Redd Kross, Black Flag, and James Chance, while spinning out into its own dangerous orbit.
“Baby’s In Detox” is a wild, two-minute collision of screeching sax and tangled guitar, a panic attack with rhythm and a smirk, where the dual vocals trade off like a fight breaking out in stereo.
“M-O-T-H-E-R” swings harder into straight-ahead rock, with a grimy Iggy and the Stooges pulse and a bassline that sounds like it’s trying to escape the mix. It sits somewhere between Vancouver’s Subhumans and The Sonics, a nasty middle ground of sneer and stomp.
Meanwhile, “Brain Malfunction” packs the furious chops of Angry Samoans and the twitchy swing of The Minutemen, like a gear-shifting punk car chase scored by caffeine and bad decisions.
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Recorded, mixed, and mastered by bassist Mike Vasquez at Sweatbox Northwest in Astoria, Scrape It Off captures the band in their natural state: loud, fast, and slightly out of control. Dan McClure’s guitar carves through the mix like a broken bottle, Seth Howard (and pinch hitter Mickey Calavera) keep the beat in a headlock, and Alpha Rasmussen’s saxophone screeches like a feral ghost at the edge of the pit.
This isn’t nostalgia. It’s punk rock with dirt under its nails, gritty, spontaneous, and proudly imperfect.
Beta Voids don’t imitate the past; they inherit it, twist it, and laugh as it catches fire. Listening to Scrape It Off is like shredding down a multi-story parking garage at midnight, grabbing a beer backstage with The Faction, or catching air at Uplands with Steve Alba. It’s music that doesn’t wait for permission, it just happens.
Scrape It Off arrives November 19 via Hovercraft Records, and the band is currently raising hell across Mexico, touring the way punk was meant to be: sweaty, reckless, and gloriously real.
Genre Tags: Punk, Post Punk, Garage, Trash Rock, 80s California Punk
RIYL: X, James Chance and the Contortions, Redd Kross, Black Flag, X-Ray Spex, Circle Jerks, The Stooges
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