TENCH-MIND BAIT ALBUM REVIEW BY MARK J. A album that grabs you by the collar and drags you face-first across the carpet.

 

TENCH — Mind Bait (UnDunn Records)

Some records announce themselves. Mind Bait doesn't announce anything — it just grabs you by the collar and drags you face-first across the carpet.

Tench have been a fixture of the Coburg/Merribek underground long enough that if you've been going to shows in this part of Melbourne, you already know what they're about. You've sweated through a set in some half-ventilated room, you've felt the room shift when they lock in. But a debut LP is different. A debut LP is the document. And Mind Bait — eight tracks, just over twenty minutes, recorded at Goatsound Studios by Jason Fuller — is exactly the document these locals deserve.

The lineage is right there if you want to trace it. The ghost of Steve Albini haunts every guitar tone, every crack of the snare — Shellac's surgical economy, the Jesus Lizard's barely-controlled menace, Drive Like Jehu's angular lurch that feels like it could collapse and somehow never does. There's Gang of Four's political tension strung across the fretboard, Unwound's dissonance turned into something almost melodic if you squint, the low-end thud and moral fury of the Rollins Band, the chaos of Flipper reined in just enough to be devastating. The DC hardcore tradition — Rites of Spring, Fugazi's rhythmic intelligence — pulses through the whole thing like a second skeleton under the skin.

But here's the thing: this doesn't sound like a band doing their homework. It sounds like a band that absorbed all of that so long ago it's just blood now.

Future Me persuasively opens proceedings and wastes zero time. Two minutes forty-three of serrated riffs and a vocal delivery that sits somewhere between a demand and a confession. The Noose is the one people will probably latch onto first — there's a hook buried in the wreckage that you won't shake for days. Coward Punch does exactly what the title implies: short, precise, and no warning. Flemington Bridge closes the record, and it's the longest track here at three and a half minutes — long, by Tench standards — and it earns every second, building in a way that makes you realise how tight the control has been across the whole run.

What makes Mind Bait genuinely special is the tension between catchiness and confrontation. These songs want to hit. They're not wilfully difficult or noodling in abstraction. But they're also not softening anything — the angles are real angles, the jarring moments are actually jarring, and the tangential turns feel less like detours and more like the whole point. This is the DNA of post-punk done honestly: music that respects your intelligence enough to not flatten itself out for you.

Pressed on black and gold splatter through UnDunn Records. Get the vinyl. Put it on. Turn it up. This is your local institution at its sharpest. Flawless,gritty and masterfully crafted.

https://tench1.bandcamp.com/album/mind-bait

(Yes, I know it was released in late Oct last year, but I somehow missed it despite playing it heaps and Dan, our photoguy and the real Major of Coburg, who never stops crapping on about these legends!!! and rightfully so!!!)

PICS above by https://www.instagram.com/dannomc/ (NO SURPRISES THERE)

https://www.instagram.com/tenchband