Heavy music never seems to take time off for the holidays, and a whole lot of new punk and hardcore records came out on New Year’s Day. Of the ones I’ve heard, my favorite is the new EP from Black Button, a frantic and angular punk band from Richmond, Virginia. Their new EP is called I Want To Be In Control, and it rips.

Black Button share members with some of the artier bands on the Richmond punk scene: Slump, whose grimy squall is vaguely psychedelic and shoegaze-influenced, and the synth-punk group Teenage Cenobite. Black Button’s whole sound is ranty, slashing hardcore punk with some serious ’90s noise-rock overtones. I Want To Be In Control opens with a frantic spoken-word piece, but it slides right into raw, ugly riffage.

I Want To Be Destroyed is Black Button’s second release, following a 2019 demo, and it makes me long for the day when I can see this band play in somebody’s living room. Check it out below.

The I Want To Be In Control cassette is out now on 11PM Records. That same label also just released an intense new demo from the Richmond band Kontaminate, and that one is good, too. Check it out here.