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Pete Swanson, "Punk Authority"
It has been quite a while since Swanson's last major statement (2011's Man With Potential) and that situation that has not been changed by the release of this 4-song EP (which is only slightly longer than last year's excellent Pro Style 12" single).  Punk Authority shows some very promising evolution though, ingeniously tweaking Pete's love of thumping four-on-the-floor beats while significantly cranking up the punishing brutality.  In theory, that should make for yet another great Pete Swanson release (and it arguably does), but the content is not always on the same level as the leap forward in style, making this EP sometimes feel comparatively bloated and light on hooks.
Punk Authority begins in absolutely brilliant fashion with the title piece, as Swanson unleashes a lopsided, lurching beat amidst an avalanche of distorted sub bass, insistently repeating bleeps, and metallic-sounding groans.  Characteristically, the kick drum is bludgeoning and ribcage-rattling, but the overall feel is light years away from the dancefloor.  Rather, "Punk Authority" sounds more like a hyper-dense take on early industrial, as its crunching, odd-time beat amidst the surrounding chaos strongly evokes a factory full of massive machinery gradually malfunctioning and falling apart.  Which, of course, is awesome.  In fact, it might be the single best thing that Swanson has ever recorded.  Unfortunately, Punk Authority's momentum begins to rapidly flag with the second song.  While I love how gleefully ravaged and blown-out everything in "C.O.P." sounds, suffocating ugliness alone is not quite enough to sustain a piece for  7+ minutes.  By the halfway point, it is clear that Pete has said everything he is going to say and it all starts to feel very plodding and repetitive.
Thankfully, the remaining two pieces are a bit better, even if they fail to make an impact as great as the opener.  "Grounds for Arrest" departs from the EP's template by featuring a recognizable house beat, but Swanson uses it artfully rather than bluntly, stopping and starting it to again mimic an increasingly unstable piece of massive machinery.  It also boasts a number of other cool features, like well-timed sizzles of static; thick, insistently burrowing bass; and some very ruined-sounding synth melodies.  In fact, the only thing stopping it from approaching the brilliance of the title salvo is that it winds down after just over 3 minutes without ever evolving much.
The 13-minute closer "Life Ends at 30" suffers from exactly the opposite problem, as it badly overstays its welcome (it is almost as long as the other 3 songs combined).  That is hugely exasperating, as Swanson again makes inspired use of a house beat, jacking up the distortion and crunch so much that it sounds far more like a rock crusher than a dance beat.  Everything else about the song is equally extreme and overloaded, which is why the duration is a problem–it is an absolutely exhausting and unrelenting sensory assault.  Music this one-dimensionally bulldozing needs to be brief to maximize its impact, as such a densely punishing torrent of sound becomes very deadening very quickly.  Some of the individual parts are absolutely crushing though–a more condensed edit could have been a stone-cold classic of relentless, mechanized brutality.
Ultimately, Punk Authority occupies the rarefied territory of a release that is equal parts masterpiece and misfire.  Both the aesthetic and the production are on a level that towers above nearly everyone else currently making beat-driven noise: no one else sounds like this...and even if they did, they would not sound nearly as great doing it.  I honestly do not know what Swanson could possibly do that would top "Punk Authority," nor do I think most of the remaining pieces could have been any heavier.  Swanson's sole misstep seems to have been releasing this EP before the songs were fully perfected, as most pieces are either too long or too short and the weakest ideas are perversely given the most time.  As far as I am concerned, Swanson's evolution can stop here: he has found the perfect aesthetic–now he just needs to perfect the songs.
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