New Music: My Pet Fossil – Michael P. Fossil

The punky motorik groove of Michael P. Fossil is a fiery introduction to My Pet Fossil’s new album, Live My Valley Life.

The screeching feedback of Michael P. Fossil – the name of the track is also a partial alter ego of the band’s frontman Julian Hall – is equally matched by the fire and fury of the arrangement as the lyrics dissect and demolish what the song perceives as the false dream offered by living on the American West Coast.

Full-on but melodic hardcore punk with a hypnotic and unyielding charge forward into an unknown future, it embraces the radical urgency and agency of Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, and Minor Threat, yet also has an eye – or ear – for making music to be heard and its message spread as widely as possible. If you’re looking for the immediacy of Turnstile and Knocked Loose but from a raw and unfiltered source, My Pet Fossil might be the band for you.

“Living out here, especially as an artist, is a goddamn grind every day of our lives,” states Hall about the album. “Long gone are the days of the careless sunshine and party rocking on the beach. The cost of living is too expensive. We grind so hard to exist out here; it’s amazing a record like this even exists. No parental capital, no corporate interest, just punk and a blistering attitude straight outta of the concrete slabs in Sacramento. Fuck what you heard; this is California. & Yeah, we love it too.”

Live My Valley Life is out on the 21st of August on Cherub Dream Records and can be pre-ordered on Bandcamp. For pre-save options and band news, follow My Pet Fossil on Instagram.