“You guys are a lot,” a high school friend once told me, one of four Shrug Dealer bandmates. After seeing how other people respond to us, I’m pretty sure he’s right. But that’s sort of cool, I think.
After all, for us, one of the most flattering reviews we ever got said, and I quote:
“If PROPAGANDHI, I SPY, or PEARS had ADHD and grew up on MR BUNGLE, they might sound like this. Absolute killer.” – Personal Punk
That’s pretty sick, eh?
Our new release, Aggressive Indifference Volume 1, is one of four (ooo, ambitious) EPs that I would describe as tediously organized chaos played as fast as we can humanly manage. It’s fast, technical (or, we try), and (hopefully) catchy. The title itself means something different to each of us, but what I can say is that we’ve somehow melded our “shorter, faster, stupider” mindset with writing songs that are extremely meaningful to all of us… whilst keeping in mind that this is all temporary and someday we’ll all die and be forgotten. But there’s a freedom to express yourself joyfully in that.
At the end of the day, you can call us whatever you want. We’ve heard “ADHD in a bottle,” the ever-so-90s “skate punk,” “nerd metal,” and most recently, someone said we’re “emo thrash.” But we’re just Shrug Dealer. The four of us are super fucking proud of these songs, and we’ve worked hard to express ourselves in them. But ultimately, we understand we’re just a blip on the radar. That said, thanks for letting us be a blip on yours.
