Rome wasn’t built in a day, which is why it’s wild that Loser Demon recorded the EP in an entire weekend. Packed with five tracks, the band’s work featured on their third extended play pulls no punches while leaving beautiful spaces to take them in.

The Guts, Bones, and Stones: What Makes EP3 

Their lead single, “New Year, New Hell” kicks off EP3, as a simple plea to hold onto someone while the world burns down around us. Setting the tone for the rest of the EP’s emotional undertones and web of connected experiences, it’s a strong single to get to know the band at a glance. That said, it is by no means the stopping point and gist of what Loser Demon has to say.

“Doesn’t Feel Like Home Anymore.” This one hurt good. Almost too much. There’s a blunt and direct perspective on losing a collective home, but refusing to abandon the conviction to steel yourself and press on in the face of it.

This one in particular has traces that seemed to echo Ben Gibbard’s influence. Either way, their own cadence and biting guitar tones that they’ve been cutting their teeth on for a good while set them apart. Astutely sobering, it puts a pit in your stomach as it turns your head to look upon the burning world around us. It’s still able to gently sway listeners to remember that looking bravely onward together is refusing to give up.

Strangely hopeful without a pandering call to relatability, it feels like an old friend we’ve never met is on the other end of a phone call about the state of the world.

“We’re always left waiting for the things we like”

“So we’ll go to sleep each night in an anxious stupor

And We’ll wake up each day with softer bones

But we’ll harden them again with a clear conviction

Even when it doesn’t feel like home anymore”

At this point, it’s clear that Loser Demon picks the battles they have to fight with weapons they forge in solidarity and sanity. 

After the first two tracks, Loser Demon pumps the voltage on “Roulette.” In a way, it’s the battle cry of daily American living. It tells a story of being toe-to-toe with the hair-raising realities and harrowing decisions to make each day. On this track is engraved the fear that anything could change on a dime, regardless of your compliance or preparations. Accordingly, the lyrics rip into the bizarrely dystopian techno hellscape that operates with a very deserves-to-burn-to-ash vibe.

“Fake video streaming real humans in costume
in the stereo surround sound solid state room
what’s a couple more candles lit on purpose
if the fire’s gonna burn them right along with us?”

After the first three tracks, Loser Demon’s  “The Tower” is about the irony of always needing more. This is one of the songs where the band keeps the focus sincere without taking themselves too seriously. Significantly present in the song is the particular spirit that takes the creative and tonal lead on a wildly tongue-in-cheek ride, with confidence behind the reins. “Expensive Speech” is somewhat of a 180 within a similar arena of the entire thing, and kind of about a dog. Definitely about moreover than the dog. At this point, Loser Demon reaches a point where the lyrics unquestionably read like a poem while the music oscillates between high-energy swings of punching chords:

Loser Demon knocked this alt rock EP right out of the park, and we’re lucky it’s landed in our yard.

Across their performances in EP3, they chose to throw the safety of “conventional rock band” out the window in pursuit of the freedom to express their perspectives and collective art as a band. That presence and connection left their unique fingerprint whilst it was applied to catch the pulse of society through EP3’s fervent storytelling. EP3’s authenticity isn’t just in the lyrical content alone, laying itself bare like many songs can/do. It was what wasn’t overtly said that came from the pattern of themes that EP3 kept hitting the nail on the head with dead ringer accuracy; their song “The Conveyer” is about the complicated feelings of being both safe and free, and how neither is guaranteed. “Expensive Speech” and “Roulette” both talk about mind-boggling observations of domination, dominion, and how overreaching plays an inexplicable part in each respective song.

Their genre is familiar without the unnecessary performative clichés. Lemon Demon’s particular strain of rock is similar to alt rock artists like Turnstile, The Menzingers, Interpol, Dinosaur Jr (with younger joints), even coupled with some spans of Somos, Motion City Soundtrack, and Death Cab for Cutie. The space around their songs is a clear and illuminating heatwave of punching truth, stemming from a wide range of influences in its family tree for audiences with eclectic taste in storytelling and damn good rock.

Listen to Loser Demon’s EP3 on Spotify