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Brand new record coming spring 2026 (Co-release with Reptilian Records)

Baltimore, Maryland

"We have a limited amount of time on this Earth." A.C. Thompson, author of Torture Taxi stood mouth to ear, and gave me an earful. "So if I have to choose how I want to spend this time I absolutely don't want to spend any of it doing stupid shit."

It was a cold and overcast San Francisco night but the words had the ring of the eternal and remembering them while listening to Birth (Defects) final record of alt takes, covers and unreleased from an underground songbook of significance, a rejoinder: you’re goddamned right.

Because while the methodology for choosing the songs here is only hinted at, they very much have a fuck-you feel that I’d like to imagine befits a singer who has to work pedal boards and hold all 140 pounds of himself aloft for the better part of 30 minutes to get the job done at all. All while voicing songs from Sonic Youth (Sunday), The Comsat Angels (Postcard), Nirvana (I Hate Myself and Want to Die) and How Much Art (SSD) among other originals.

Recorded by J Robbins (Government Issue, Jawbox) , mixed by Barrett Jones (Pussy Galore, KARP, Nirvana, Foo Fighters) and mastered by Mathew Barnhart (METZ Bob Mould), Birth (Defects) have moved the needle from nice songs to a kind of urgency that would make the original authors proud it seems. Mostly because it feels, for them, almost more necessary to do this, this time, than it was for the authors’ the first time.

Which is the glory of those who do without concern/interest in recompense. That is, when no one gives a fuck what you do, you can do just about anything and here Birth (Defects) do exactly that and the sound to my ear wipes any and all slates clean and shows that they heard the Platonic triad working through these tunes, their heads and ultimately into a record that if you don’t listen to it means more about what you can hear than anything about what they didn’t do.

Which is usually the case in the face of an almost perfect record. I dug it, and you should too. – Eugene S. Robinson, BUNUEL/OXBOW

RIYL: No Trend, Flipper, Discharge, Hijokaidan, Chokebore, Distorted Pony