Devil Ultrasonic Dream captures what it feels like to be born into a world you never asked for and inheriting a collapsing system, continuing a tradition that stretches back to Black Flag: start a band, hit the road, scream about what confuses and enrages you and have the best party in town. This is peak Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater worship - wall-to-wall adrenaline with the rough-hewn glory of old-school skate punk. Though Teen Mortgage are just a duo, this record is thick with overdubs: snarling bass, extra rhythm guitars, lead lines, and layered gang vocals, but not in a way that polishes the rage away. It’s fuzzed, fried, and gloriously trashy, with the ‘in-the-can’ energy that defined early DIY hardcore - a perfect vehicle for the album’s clenched-first message.

Teen Mortgage aren’t offering manifestos, anarchist essays, or hardcore lectures, but they are political by necessity. Party is a two-minute, in-and-out, perfect punk song and nothing captures the band’s spirit better: “But I don’t wanna be part of the war machine/They got me forced to work but I’m born to party.” And they are born to party: playing blistering punk music to a generation that need to scream. They know joy and freedom are a form of resistance, and they’re really fucking good at delivering it. Teen Mortgage have proven you can have hooks and melody without sanding down the dirt in the raw, urgent lineage of Misfits and Descendents. Beneath the fuzz and fury is pure, rock and roll craftmanship and seriously well-written songs, scrappy and screamed.  Teen Mortgage built all of this totally DIY, with no backing, just sheer force of will and earned opening slots supporting Weezer and Smashing Pumpkins before dropping this album on the metal powerhouse Roadrunner Records. It’s a hell of a trajectory for two guys who clearly couldn’t bear to do anything with their lives except play punk music, and refused to settle.