Genre(s): Rock, punk, emo
Label: Counter Intuitive Records
Released: August 16, 2024
About Combat
Holden Wolf, singer/guitarist/songwriter of Combat, is a music nerd’s music nerd. The person who goes beyond simply obsessing over albums on Discogs to start a band and imagine deluxe editions of “bonus tracks, interludes, and alternate takes”1 before the album is even done. Like his predecessors Jeff Rosenstock, Ryland Heagy, and Jade Lilitri, Wolf transforms this concentrated passion into a brand of DIY pop-punk that is just damn catchy.
The project emerged with its Fun EP in May 2020, setting off a consistent pace of short-burst releases across the next 18 months. Most of these featured raw recordings but set a standard with a tapestry of rich influences worn on Wolf’s sleeve: from the obvious Bomb The Music Industry! to more recent torchbearers in Origami Angel and Prince Daddy and The Hyena.2 Each release was sharper, as if the band was chiseling their sound in real-time.
Their debut record, 2022’s Text Me When You Get Back, felt like the next step in this DIY journey. In a recent Stereogum feature, Wolf admitted, “We recorded that album in nine, maybe 12 hours at most, and then mixed it ourselves. I didn’t know if it was good or not, because we didn’t really know what we were doing.” Nevertheless, that work yielded the clearest look at what Combat could be: a catchy emo act that can bounce from acoustic folk to skate punk with ska-adjacent breaks.
Why You Should Care
Fast-forward to 2024. Combat has gone from small crowds to what could be considered a relative word-of-mouth success, so long as you don’t value your mental health and earning a livable wage. They signed with Counter Intuitive Records and geared up to release Stay Golden with a trio of singles best defined by the album’s intro track as “Enhanced Combat Mode.” These teases, like the record itself, blow everything they have done to this point out of the water in terms of scope, musicianship, and production.
From the moment it starts, Stay Golden blasts through its tracklist like a prequel to Jeff Rosenstock’s WORRY, but in reverse. Its first half practically races by like the band is short on studio time, all while planting lyrical and melodic seeds for delightful callbacks later on in the record. Wolf’s lyrical confessionals are at the center of this whirlwind, picking at the exhaustion of late adolescence as friends disappear into adulthood. He tackles the mundanity of skipping class and wasting hours in bed alongside vulnerable reflections on taking up space and mourning dead or departed loved ones.
There are also cheeky references to their past releases and songs on the record. The title lyric from the chorus on “Faith” (“Like George Michael said ‘Remember to have faith’ / Then he played a rad solo on an upright bass”) is recontextualized by the album’s closing moments (“George never played the upright bass / Was just a line to fill out space / With impersonal, infactual, and total witty quips”). In these moments, Wolf shows his true hand as a literal 20-year old — not all lines have meaning — but it never undermines heartfelt messages across each of the 12 tracks. Instead, he weaves silly jabs at his own creative style (“I’ll write another record / Reference all my past endeavors / I got sharper claws and leitmotifs / And if you don’t like it, fuckin’ bite me”) with sobering lines likely to resonate with most Millenials and Zoomers alike (“Oh my god / I feel like everyone I know / Is getting good jobs and stable homes / Where everything’s made of gold.”).
The fact that the band behind Wolf is finely tuned to keep up with his mile-a-minute stream of consciousness is crucial to every point landing. Isabella Devarona is a consistent delight on the drums, with spastic fills on every track. Wolf and guitarist Max Slavich are well-balanced and happy to play off each other with dueling harmonies, or the occasional key changes. Josh Bell’s bass grooves sit perfectly between Devarona’s pounding rhythms and the guitar-heavy melodies. Production from Origami Angel’s Ryland Heagy helps these songs feel as massive as they deserve. But Drew Portalatin deserves equal praise for ensuring every layer is clear and present in the final mix.
In Closing…
What I love most about this record is that listening to it is like hopping in a time machine to my late teens and early twenties. Its sound is punchy, impressively written, and well-produced to feel as impactful as great records from now bygone eras. In doing so, Combat has created a fantastic second full-length that should make them a band to watch in the DIY punk scene.
Listen + Purchase Stay Golden
Works Referenced
1: “Band To Watch: Combat” by Ian Cohen (Stereogum)
2: “Combat deliver an ambitious emo concept album, ‘Stay Golden’” by Andrew Sacher (BrooklynVegan)
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