I was initially tempted to describe G.L.O.S.S.’s debut EP Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit as feeling like a punch to the gut, but I was wrong, it’s a whole lot more like throwing a punch with all your weight behind it. This EP makes my heart race and my palms itch. It is walls of chugging, pounding rhythm and screaming guitars, with vocalist Sadie ripping through it all in a series of blood curdling yells and sneering, cold truths.
In only eight minutes the Olympia, Washington hard-core band reclaim what the genre is supposed to be all about: outcast solidarity. With punk music dominated by cis, straight, white men, G.L.O.S.S are there for everyone else; for women, for trans and queer kids. For anyone who feels alone and unsafe, Sadie declares “this is for the outcasts, rejects, girls and the queers.” It is a rallying cry.
But, it’s not just politics that makes G.L.O.S.S worthwhile. The band are so well-versed in what makes a hard-core song good that although the EP starts at full throttle and never lets up, it’s never a drag. Rather, it sucks you in immediately, pulling you in and out of songs with scorching hot guitar feedback and shoving you along with perfectly placed guitar solos. The longest song clocks in at a minute and fifty-five seconds, so G.L.O.S.S really gets to the point straight away, never cushioning the blow. When music finds its foundations in intense emotional responses there can be a tendency for things to get out of control, but G.L.O.S.S never let that happen. There is nothing extraneous, the parts all slot together cleanly and clearly. The band members seem to be following each other, shoving forever forward, never looking back.
The lyrical content is at times obviously personally painful, but Sadie is so aware that she is not alone in her experiences. Her lyrics demand accountability and preach solidarity. In “Masculine Artifice” she scathingly lays bare societies expectations of trans women and then tears them down, screaming, “I’m not pathetic, I’m not your project, I wasn’t put here for you [. . .] masculinity was the artifice, rip it away. Femininity is always the heart of us, trans girls be free.”
Even in the midst of writing and playing music about massive injustice, trauma and fear, G.L.O.S.S is not disheartening. The fast paced, driving songs feel like catalysts for personal and interpersonal change. They are angry but they are not stagnant. Sadie, Julaya, Tannrr, Jake and Corey are not creatively paralysed by their outcast status, they are pushing and refining a genre, forging more space in music for people who don’t have enough space in the world. Hard-core usually isn’t an easy genre to just slip into on a whim, but whether you love it or hate it, I can promise that G.L.O.S.S are a band worth listening to. It’s loud and confronting, but if you’re feeling threatened and alone it’s guaranteed to make you feel like someone’s got your back.