SPLITJAW comes in hard, and they don't let up. Truth & Reconciliation is the kind of EP that you put on and suddenly realize you've been clenching your jaw the whole time. The band sits comfortably in that zone where hardcore and metal stop arguing about territory and just start breaking things together. This is their second EP, and if the first one introduced them, this one makes clear that they are not here to ease anyone into anything. The record has a personality from the first second, and it never wavers. That kind of consistency is harder to pull off than it looks, especially in a genre where a lot of bands mistake volume for identity.
Chicago has always had a mean streak when it comes to heavy music. There's something in the DNA of the city's underground that resists polish, that pushes back against the idea that hard music needs to be made palatable. SPLITJAW understands that instinctively. They describe themselves as Windy City heavy, and that's not just geography; it's a stance. The band wears their politics openly too, and while that's not what you're here to read about, it's worth saying that the aggression on this record doesn't feel performative. It feels like it comes from somewhere real. That matters. You can tell the difference. "Baptized in Snake Oil" opens the EP with the kind of riff that feels like a door being kicked in. There's no intro, no atmospheric buildup, no moment where the band politely announces themselves. It just starts, and it starts at full force. The guitar tone is thick and low, the kind of sound that you feel in your chest before your brain processes it. The vocal delivery is guttural throughout, staying in a register that suits the music completely. This isn't a record that wants to be accessible to everyone, and it isn't trying to be. The title itself gives you a pretty clear signal that there's a cynicism baked into the opening track, a sense that certain kinds of trust have already been burned, and what's left is just the confrontation. The song gets in, does what it needs to do, and gets out. No padding, no posturing.
The title track is where the record earns a little more of its weight. "Truth & Reconciliation" carries a different kind of energy than the opener; it's still heavy, still rooted in that same dense low-end attack, but there's something more deliberate happening structurally. The tension is built rather than just applied. You get the sense that the band is working something out in real time, that the song has stakes beyond just the sonic. It's still a beatdown, but a more purposeful one. The title carries historical and political resonance that the music doesn't shy away from. This isn't a band using heavy language casually. There's intention here, and the track earns the name it was given. "Stabbing Me Gently" has the best title on the record,d and it fully delivers on what that title promises. Sardonic and violent in equal measure, it moves with a nastiness that almost feels playful, if playful means absolutely merciless. This is probably the track where SPLITJAW's personality comes through most clearly. There's a dark humor embedded in the construction of it, a wink behind the menace, and it keeps the record from feeling one-dimensional. A lot of bands working in this space lock into a single emotional register and stay there for the duration. SPLITJAW understands that brutality lands harder when there's something else going on underneath it. "Stabbing Me Gently" is the best example of that on the EP. It's the track that sticks around in your head, not just because of how hard it hits, but because of how it hits with a kind of knowing quality that makes you want to go back and listen again.
"Vigilance" closes things out and lands exactly where it needs to. It was the track released ahead of the EP as a single, and you can understand why that was the choice. It's the most focused and direct thing here, distilled down to what SPLITJAW do when they're operating at their clearest. There's no drop in energy coming into the closer; if anything, the record ends with the same momentum it started with, which is not a given. A lot of EPs front-load their best material and fade. This one doesn't. "Vigilance" feels like a statement rather than a conclusion, the kind of final track that makes you want to restart the record immediately rather than sit in the silence after. The whole thing runs around ten minutes. That brevity is a choice, and it's the right one. SPLITJAW doesn't overstay their welcome because they were never trying to. There's no filler here, no transitional track that exists just to give the listener a breath. Every song is pulling its weight and knows exactly what it's supposed to be doing. That discipline is something that a lot of bands spend years trying to develop. SPLITJAW has it already, and it shows in how tight and purposeful Truth & Reconciliation feels from start to finish. This is a band that knows exactly what they are, and this record sounds like it.
Here's their track Baptized In Snake Oil:
Go give them a follow on Instagram: SPLITJAW
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