Artist: Deaf Club
Album: We Demand a Permanent State of Happiness
Year: 2025
Label: Three One G
Genre: Grindcore / Noise Rock / Hardcore
At the time of the release of We Demand a Permanent State of Happiness, Justin Pearson is 50 years old. There’s something surreal about the contorted, dissonant sounds emanating from the mind of a fifty-year-old. No disrespect to the (first two) Foo Fighters (albums), but Dave Grohl was already writing songs that a CEO could quote for inspiration at 36. Munky from Korn is now playing ambient music. Fred Durst is playing himself in horror movies. Meanwhile, Justin Pearson is still serving up song titles like “All Hot Dogs Are In-Bread.”
Justin is a true original, carrying his anarchic spirit into every project he does. While there can never be another Justin Pearson, in 2025 it’s almost impossible to imagine another Pearson-like figure. He’s not just a local San Diego scene kingpin, not just a serial collaborator, and not just a one-off sensation from the Jerry Springer Show. He’s someone who has sustained a career, becoming a household name – at least among those who once argued whether Is This It? or Room on Fire was the better album – all while making stridently anti-commercial, skronky music.
Even if someone today has the artistic vision and hustle of Pearson, there’s not going to be another because the economics and culture have changed. Pearson rose in the hardcore world at the tail end of the CD era, when even a band like the Locust could make money. Whereas the Locust had to overcome numerous barriers to entry to get where they got, now someone making anti-commercial, challenging music has to stand out in a world without barriers to entry.
Today, a band trying to kick a hole in the universe is competing for Bandcamp attention, blog space, and open-mic night slots against ten thousand bands who, at the end of the day, are playing some variation of pop. Professional bloggers (through commercial pressure, not personal failing) get more traffic hyping left-field pop than promoting bands playing a different game altogether. Challenging music that gets any coverage is either made by veterans with goodwill built up (yes, like Pearson), or shoved into the corner with metal and hardcore. Sure, there’s still new vicious noisemakers like Uboa and Yuko Araki out there, but that sort of thing is rarely covered – you have to go looking for it. In other words, I have no doubt there’s brilliant and challenging music out there, but the sensible professional writer wants credit for finding the next pop sensation, not the next provocateur.
This isn’t to say Pearson is where he’s at due to a fluke. Quite the contrary – he’s been consistently bringing the goods for at least two decades. While Pearson is a serial collaborator (see Some Girls with Wes Eisold or Dead Cross with Mike Patton), when he fronts a guitar-based bands (the Locust, Retox, Deaf Club) there’s a certain uniformity of style regardless of collaborators. There’s a reason the Locust is celebrated as Pearson’s flagship band – that’s where he truly found his sound.
And what is that sound? Pearson’s unique voice out front, high-velocity tempos, dissonant guitars and/or keyboards. Frankly, it’s mind-boggling: the collaborators he brings in have ludicrous amounts of talent, personality, and technical chops, yet the music always comes around to having Pearson’s sonic signature all over it.
And he has honed that signature: Deaf Club has impeccable songwriting instincts, leaning into tempo, lyrical cadence, rhythmic variation, and weaponizing riffs for maximum mosh-pit impact. Keyboards are largely absent, but Brian Amilfitano nearly steals the show with his Melt-Banana-esque guitar abuse. The album peaks at the end of “Frequency Illusion,” when the entire band locks into a dynamite groove that is still fully skronk. “End of an Ear” is a surprise closer where – except for a few well-placed blastbeat freakouts – it sounds like something you could play for someone who doesn’t listen to anything harder than At the Drive-In. Simply put, if you’ve ever liked a second of music fronted by Justin Pearson, you’re going to love this.
But that begs the question: who is looking for an album like this? While I wasn’t on the San Diego scene, I earned my bona fides by catching the Locust on tour with Fantômas and Melt-Banana. That means I’m old. My perception of this album is clouded by those 2004 goggles. Is this the type of music that can attract young listeners? The sneering part of me says this isn’t the kind of shoegaze wallpaper you can slap behind a short video. But are young people really afraid of shards of glass in their eardrums? That can’t be the case – the young will always want to wild out.
Moreover, even in the so-called glory days plenty of people dismissed Pearson as nonsense, but there was at least a groundswell of critics who encouraged you to listen. Establishment acts like Sonic Youth took anarchic noisemakers on tour. Now Pearson is the establishment act – but is there even a touring ecosystem where he can pull those bands up?
While there’s nothing wrong with a good pop tune, if the world doesn’t move away from exclusively fawning over the easiest music, albums like We Demand a Permanent State of Happiness will vanish. Thank god for the maniacs – and for the few outlets that still amplify them.
Image: Album cover © Three One G Records. Used for review purposes.
Review by: Dugu / Molten Minimalism
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