Ashes of TV Slime, Reborn Louder: Flying Heads - Self Titled (Album Review) Released 9/2/25

 

There's a certain violence to brevity, and Chicago's Flying Heads understand that better than most. Rising from the ashes of TV Slime, the band draws on members with roots scattered across the city's underground, such as Judas Goats, War Elephant, Hellkite, Heavy Medz, Shitizen, the Side-Bets, UFUX, and more, as a pedigree that explains the sheer instinctual confidence running through this record. Any longtime Chicagoland punk hearing that TV Slime connection is going to lean in immediately, and rightfully so. Across fourteen tracks that barely crack thirty minutes combined, the band's self-titled album operates less like a traditional record and more like a controlled demolition, in, out, and gone before you've fully processed what just happened. This is noisy punk colliding head-on with something the band calls "rogue metal," equal parts crust-punk snarl and sludge-heavy low end, the kind of record that conjures classic UK noise-punk chaos as much as it does the murkier, more bottom-heavy tendencies of underground sludge acts. The result is a record that feels genuinely unhinged in the best possible way, born out of a city with no shortage of noise-rock and punk pedigree to draw from, and a lineup that's clearly lived through most of it.

The album opens with "Humbaba," a title lifted straight from ancient Mesopotamian mythology: the monstrous guardian of the cedar forest in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and it's a fitting way to kick things off. There's something appropriately primal about naming your opener after a demon nobody could tame, and at just over two minutes, the track doesn't waste time establishing atmosphere before tearing into full aggression. This isn't a record built for headphones at low volume; it's the kind of album that seems to demand to be played loud, almost daring the listener to turn it down. From there, the record barely pauses for breath. "Witness" and "Turmoil" clock in at under two minutes and thirty-six seconds respectively, the latter barely qualifying as a full song by conventional standards, more like a controlled eruption than a composition. That's very much the album's operating logic: songs exist exactly as long as they need to and not a second longer, a philosophy that gives the record a relentless, almost feral momentum. Nothing overstays its welcome because nothing is given the chance to.

"Skull Dagger" and "Ritual Deafening" lean into the record's noisier tendencies, favoring texture and abrasion over conventional hooks, while "Ulthar," again pulling from Lovecraftian and mythic naming conventions, this time referencing H.P. Lovecraft's fictional town, stands out as the album's longest track at just over three minutes, giving it room to feel almost expansive by comparison to everything surrounding it. It's a smart sequencing choice, using the record's one genuine slow-burn moment to break up what's otherwise a nonstop sprint. The back half of the record doesn't let up. "Puncture Lust" and "Teenage Hell" both deliver exactly what their titles promise: blunt, visceral, and entirely uninterested in subtlety, while shorter cuts like "Ay Eye" and "No Reset" function almost like interludes of chaos, brief bursts that keep the album's pacing feeling erratic and unpredictable rather than formulaic. The closer, "Trial By Spears," ends things on suitably combative footing, a fitting final note for a record that's spent its entire runtime refusing to sit still. There's no grand finale here, no attempt at a sweeping, cathartic send-off just another sharp jolt, and then it's over.

What makes this self-titled debut work is its total commitment to velocity, noise, and volume as identity. This isn't a band interested in polish or accessibility; the production leans intentionally rough, the songwriting favors instinct over structure, and the whole thing plays out like a band trying to cram as much aggression as possible into the smallest possible window. Given the members' history across so many corners of Chicago's punk, metal, and noise scenes, that instinctual quality reads less like inexperience and more like veterans stripping everything down to its rawest form on purpose. Chicago's punk-adjacent scene has always sprawled in a dozen directions, but this particular flavor that's sloppy, raucous, and unpretentious feels like one of the city's most honest exports. That approach won't be for everyone; anyone looking for hooks to latch onto or songs that build toward something will likely find the record frustratingly fleeting. But for listeners who want noisy punk delivered with genuine unpredictability, best enjoyed loud and probably with a cheap beer and something stronger on the side, Flying Heads make a compelling case for chaos as craft.

At under thirty minutes total, this is an album built to be consumed in a single, breathless sitting, and it mostly rewards that approach, leaving you a little disoriented and reaching to hit play again just to catch what you missed the first time through. It's a fitting calling card for a Chicago band built from the wreckage of a dozen other ones, and one with clearly no interest in slowing down to explain itself.

Here's Flying Heads performing Humbaba at The Empty Bottle: 

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