Beautiful Wreckage: IT IS - Ensuring Chaos (Demo) (Track Review) Released: 8/6/25

There's something refreshingly unfiltered about a band that names their demo exactly what it sounds like. Ensuring Chaos doesn't promise you polish it promises you noise, urgency, and a band still figuring out how loud they can get before something breaks. The Aurora, Illinois punk four-piece operate with a lean, scrappy energy that feels earned rather than affected, and from the first moment the demo opens up, IT IS make clear they have no interest in easing you in.

Charles Johnson holds down the rhythm section with a hard-hitting, no-frills drum approach that keeps everything moving at a pace that never lets you settle, while Ryan Mazzio's bass cuts through the mix with surprising clarity for a demo recording. Where IT IS really earns attention, though, is in the dual guitar and vocal dynamic between Manny and Elenora. The two trade and layer tones in a way that gives the band more sonic range than a standard punk outfit typically leans into moments of jagged interplay offset by passages that carry genuine melodic weight, their vocal contributions adding a push-pull texture that suggests a band with far more to say than their runtime allows.

As a demo, Ensuring Chaos is rough in the right places. The rawness isn't a flaw; it's the point. This is a document of a band staking their claim, and IT IS sound like a group still building steam. If this is the chaos they're ensuring now, the full-length version of this band is worth keeping a very close eye on.

Check out the demo here:

Ensuring Chaos (Demo Version)

Go give them a follow on Instagram: IT IS

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Kentucky's Heavy Secret: Stormtoker - These Edibles Ain't Shit (EP Review) Released: 12/5/25

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The Long Way to Simple: SMFC -The First Four Songs (EP Review) Released: 2/20/26 (Part 1) & 3/27/26 (Part 2)

There's something refreshingly unpretentious about calling your debut EP The First Four Songs . No cryptic title, no elaborate concept, no attempt to manufacture mystique out of thin air. Just Steev Custer, a guitarist with more than thirty years of Chicago scene credibility behind him, putting his work in front of you and letting it speak for itself. In an era when even the smallest releases arrive wrapped in press releases thick with buzzwords and carefully curated influences, that kind of directness feels almost radical. Custer is not a new name to anyone who's paid attention to the Chicago punk and rock underground, and his fingerprints are all over the city's musical history with names such as Death and Memphis, The Bomb, and My Big Beautiful. It's a lengthy résumé that spans post-punk, power pop, and everything in between, but these are bands built on the premise that a great song is worth more than a great concept, and that ethos carries directly into SMFC, his...

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