Fancy words about Infinity Crime

If you’ve paid any attention to Portland music in the last fifteen years, you’ve had a run in with the work of Charlie Salas-Humara and Papi Fimbres. You’ve probably had more than a few, actually. These guys stay busy. Salas-Humara fronted The Planet The in the mid-2000s before fully committing to synths with his solo project, Panther. You might know Papi Fimbres as the drummer for Portland’s greatest live band, Mascaras. Or as the drummer for Savila. Or…well, he’s in seventeen bands. You’ve seen him around. 

The Portland mainstays joined forces in the genre-smashing Sun Angle about ten years ago, and currently play together in the equally adventurous Wet Fruit. But this is a collaborative relationship that cannot be contained. They needed another outlet together. That outlet is ESCARE, a two-man demolition crew bent on wrecking punk rock and putting it back together in new and better ways. 

Infinity Crime, the band’s first album and Drunk Dial’s first full-length cassette release, was recorded during quarantine, but you wouldn’t know it. Even distance can’t mess with the chemistry. 

“It's always been so easy & effortless to write music with Charlie, and since we were in quarantine, I suggested we write a whole album from phone to phone,” Fimbres explains. “I have this rare '70s XLR to 1/8th in stereo cable that I hooked up to a Neumann 705 mic and I recorded raw beats directly into my Voice Memos app and emailed them to Charlie.”

“The recording process was super liberating because the drums were recorded first without any music and given to me no context, so I was forced to play whatever patterns Papi came up with,” Salas-Humara says. “I created guitar and vocals as if the tonal elements of the drums were dictating how the songs should go. Papi plays very melodically, so I just followed the vibe and notes of the different drums to a certain extent.”

Infinity Crime is a punk record, to be sure, but it’s a wildly unpredictable one that zigs when you think it’s gonna zag. There are moments when the pinwheeling songs seem like they’re about to spin straight off the edge, but the narrow danger zone between solid ground and thin air is right where ESCARE is most comfy, and so they remain on that precipice for the duration, all nerves and jitters and joy. 

The album speaks to an abiding love for classic American hardcore. The kind of everlasting love that is sturdy enough to be pushed to its limit.

“I was in hardcore bands in the late 80's when I was super young and we have both been obsessed with 80's punk, particularly with SST,” Salas-Humara says. “At first we were going to do a hardcore record, but it sort of devolved into what we both are influenced by.”

“Punk is definitely the foundation to all the music Charlie & I write together,” Fimbres adds. “I have always brought my influences to the table to bring a different perspective on the subject, such as cumbia, jazz, tropical & funk. But when we started hanging out when Sun Angle was formed, we would send each other albums constantly, and they were always weird, abstract rarities that fed into our psyche.”

The album opens with “Broken Back,” a frenetic introduction to ESCARE's wild sound and an enchanting glimpse at an alternate version of punk history, one in which Minutemen and Big Boys were as widely adored as Minor Threat and early Black Flag. Before you can get too comfortable, though, Fimbres and Salas-Humara switch gears with “Truth Is,” a dark and driving song that sounds like deconstructed Agent Orange. Or something. But not quite. That’s the thing about this album: it’s familiar but your finger is never going to land on exactly how or why. 

Take “Queen of the Nation,” a blast of anxious dance-punk that wouldn’t be out of place on the first Liars album. But it could also be on a Crass Records compilation, sandwiched between Flux of Pink Indians and Zounds. Even the more straightforward songs like “Brain Island” and “Long Letters” sound a little bit wrong in massively right ways, like they are haunted by a secret strain of punk that has been buried in some record collector’s basement and has been warped by time into something magical and slightly menacing. 

The penultimate track, “My War Side 2,” is the album’s skeleton key. The title pays homage to a hardcore legend’s not-altogether-welcome upending of punk convention. But where Black Flag slowed down to a meditative crawl to find some deeper truth in an ossifying sound, ESCARE packs everything they can into their trusted vehicle and then puts a brick on the gas. You’ll never catch up with them, but that’s the whole point. Sit back and be wowed. 

RIYL:
Big Boys
Minutemen
James Chance and the Contortions
Explode Into Colors
Nots
Good Throb