Bug Swallow - S/T
KNUCKLES ON STUN
Released on April 1st, 2026
Picture me riding shotgun with Kermit the Frog on our way to smash the state and eat the rich, bouncing around in the Clampett family jalopy. Forget the smiling, wholesome, public-access mascot. The real Kermit chain-smokes hand-rolled cigarettes behind the venue and hands you weird cassettes at 2AM.
Before I’m dropped off, I’m tossed a green tape with a Xerox-ed cover of Kermit absolutely decking a cop in the face. Bug Swallow. Colour me intrigued.
I open the tape and pop in the green cassette, greeted by a manic Kermy. High-pitched keyboard squeals and mutant voices swarm from the speakers and into my ears, bouncing around in my head like flies trapped inside a fluorescent gas station sign. The instrumental “Intro” ushers a vicious and playful creature. I’d already heard rumors they use a drum machine, but I’m always asking: what kind of drum machine? It’s PCM samples or something, largely unaffected, and in your face; sounding gorgeous so far.
The music holds an intense, textural pressure to reinforce the lyrics from this point out, which are genuinely pissed-off in a modern-collapse kind of way; at times personal, and at times cryptic, but fully aware that the world’s cooking alive outside while everybody’s still expected to clock in smiling. “Dirt Belly” brings the ‘what’s for lunch?’ energy, and the shimmering guitars and oddly placed hi-hat in the ‘choruses’ give it a uniquely sexy pimple. Even without a drummer, this band reads as a great live act.
The cowbell and banjo opening of “Way Back Here” teases a slow song, but kicks it right back up to promenade into oblivion. It’s so nice to see the synth-organ liberated from the church halls to the mosh pits. The ascending motif builds a solid tension that propels into “All Critters”, and the decree that ‘all critters go to heaven / and all cops go to hell’. The relentlessly discordant “Kream Korn” sounds like the record literally flies off the spindle and makes me want a shower. Somehow the corn imagery completely fits.
They chant, “If I fire, face the target / little piggy goes to market” among harmonica riffs and a rapid hoofbeat pulse in “If I”. “Froggy Mental Breakdown” is maybe the most accurate song title imaginable here. It builds just enough before wobbling into total psychic collapse, with incoherent screeches orbiting around the lead vocal like auditory hallucinations. You can practically feel the walls sweating. “Kumming in Crisis” closes the tape with the first real midtempo endeavor, only to pick it right back up in the end. Even at its calmest, it still lunges forward until it crashes into a sharp ending. No ballads. No breathers. Bug Swallow simply refuses to chill, and I love it.
I ended up talking with vocalist/writer CC Codpiece afterward and basically just gushed about how much joy this tape has given me. Turns out the band started in 2024 mostly as an excuse to hang out, make weird music with friends, and avoid taking themselves too seriously. You can hear that; no posturing, no forced coolness. Just people making fried, bugged-out egg-punk in the joy of each other’s company. At one-point CC told me: “The relationships with my friends are more important than this band will ever be.” What’s good for the swarm is hell for the boot.
