RETURN OF THE PUNK ROCK SURF MONSTER

The curator's instruction is simple: "Run for your life!" And they're not kidding. Seventeen tracks of horror punk, psychobilly, deathrock, and surf rock colliding at full velocity—this is what happens when Dick Dale's reverb-drenched guitar meets Black Flag's rage and they both chase you down a dark alley at 180 BPM. I'm not running toward anything. I'm running from something that refuses to stop gaining ground.\n\nThe Dahmers kick it off with "Cut Me Down"—three and a half minutes of garage punk that sounds like a chainsaw starting in an empty warehouse. Teen Mortgage follows with "Tuning In," barely two minutes of egg punk chaos that moves too fast to second-guess. Then Plague Vendor's "Black Sap Scriptures" arrives with deathrock dread, all minor chords and distortion. This is the genre-blend magic at work: punk's three-chord refusal to quit, psychobilly's caffeinated energy, surf rock's reverb-soaked menace. The playlist doesn't pick a lane. It careens between them. Death From Above 1979's "Right On, Frankenstein!" is two-piece noise-punk maximalism. Japanther's "First of All" is DIY ethos compressed into 134 seconds. High Vis brings post-punk tension with "Walking Wires." Then The Death Set drops two tracks back-to-back—"We Are Going Anywhere Man" and "Can You Seen Straight?"—and suddenly there's moombahton-influenced electronic chaos invading the punk party. My legs don't know whether to thrash or glide. The tempo shifts aren't accidents. They're survival mechanisms.\n\nMile 4. Legs filing formal complaints. Bass Drum of Death's "Nerve Jamming" is management's response: denied. The riff is pure pharmaceutical-grade momentum, all fuzz and refusal. Odd Couple's "Shake" keeps the pressure on. Then King Tuff's "Demon From Hell" arrives—89 seconds of garage-psych delirium that sounds exactly like its title. This is where the horror punk aesthetic pays dividends: when your cardiovascular system is staging a coup, you need music that acknowledges the monstrosity of what you're doing. Running is voluntary suffering. Horror punk doesn't pretend otherwise. It soundtracks the B-movie in your lungs. Plague Vendor returns with "Rumble," White Reaper tears through "She Wants To" in 80 seconds flat, and Dog Party's "Lost Control" becomes the moment's thesis statement. I have lost control. The playlist is driving now.\n\nNew Candys' "Surf 2" drops at Mile 6, and suddenly there's space-rock reverb washing over everything—a brief moment of neo-psychedelic relief before Dirty Fences' "Kilsythe" kicks back into garage rock fury. The Murlocs close with "Rolling On," psychedelic rock meeting surf aesthetics, and I realize the monster isn't behind me anymore. It's in my legs. It's been there the whole time. The playlist didn't help me escape. It taught me to run with teeth bared. Forty-two minutes of refusing to negotiate with tired muscles, backed by every subgenre of punk and psych that ever picked up a distorted guitar. The DIY ethos applies here too: nobody's coming to save you. The only way out is through. The reverb fades. The monster's still running.