Undampened ardor
Punk band Wet Specimens made gives local music veterans a chance to rock on.
Punk rock. Within the loud, fast two-three chord onslaught, there’s a more diverse genre than you think.
Albany’s Wet Specimens is a testament to that statement.
The band’s four members come from different punk-rock backgrounds, and with Wet Specimens they toss those experiences out the window and try something new.
The group started in early 2018 after the dissolution of 518 hard-core punk band Neutron Rats. Drummer Dan Crampton was in Neutron Rats and is now in Mystery Girl, the local band that evokes the classic early punk sounds of the Ramones and New York Dolls. He started riffing on some new ideas with Mystery Girl bassist Eric Pressman and guitarist Cannonball, who he had played with in several other groups over the years and also plays with Pressman in Vicegrip.
As the music began to take shape, Crampton reached out to former Neutron Rats singer and guitarist Colin Betor. It was just the kind of project he was looking to be a part of.
“I came to (their) practice one day. I wanted to do something different than Neutron Rats, where I played guitar and sang,” Betor recalled. “They already, for the most part, had the sound down and I just needed to add lyrics.
“They had this spooky, haunted house kind of atmosphere (to the music),” he continued. “It was dark and creepy without being too serious. I tried to make my lyrics, not to sound arrogant or self-important, more on the cryptic side of things.”
Writing for Wet Specimens required a whole new approach for Betor, both topically and musically.
“It was definitely a challenge to switch gears. I was used to writing guitar stuff and with Cannonball, that part is taken away,” he noted. “I got a little more freedom to write. I didn’t have to
write around my guitar part.
“I wanted to take, like, a more literary approach to writing,” Betor added, referencing that he drew inspiration from the moods conjured up in classic horror films and writers. “I wanted to write without being fully clear. It was a little more fun and challenging. In Neutron Rats I was writing about impending nuclear holocaust and things like that.”
The songs came together fast. Wet Specimens released a demo cassette in spring 2018 and two rippin’ EPS, “Serpent Circle” and “Haunted Flesh” last year. The lyrics are rife with viciously lurid imagery and the music pummels, as the harder edge of punk tends to sound. But underneath that, Wet Specimens mixes up its sonic palette with touches of post-punk, goth and death rock and tosses in some theremin to heighten the spook factor and bring a little drama to the material.
This week, Wet Specimens has a new release. It’s a split-ep with the band Cartridge out of Boston. It’s the second notable 518 punk split-ep to come out. August saw Male Patterns team up with New Jersey-based Executors. But while that one showcased strength in unified aesthetic and approach, the Wet Specimens-Cartridge EP highlights the diversity of the punk genre.
While Wet Specimens puts a surrealist, horror spin on its music and used the EP to make tweaks to its sound, Betor describes Cartridge as “more straightforward, Discharge-style ‘80s punk.” For Betor, the most important part of the EP was “matching the energy of the Cartridge side, because their side is awesome.”
He’s enthusiastic about the impending release of the split, as it gives listeners two exciting, distinct listening options. While the band waits for the EP’S digital release on October 10 and vinyl issuance a few weeks after, they’re already looking ahead to the next thing.
Wet Specimens released a special lathe cut of “Serpents Circle” during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic to give that EP the vinyl treatment it hadn’t originally received upon release. There’s another potential collaboration, this time with another local act, that Betor is hopeful will come to fruition this month. And Wet Specimens has a handful of new songs nearing completion, with the hopes of recording a full LP of material.
“We’re writing and working
toward an LP,” Betor said. “For an LP it’s more of a focus on consistency between each song, so it’s one coherent picture.
“Live music, shows, they’re coping mechanisms for a lot of us, and who knows when those will happen again,” he added. “(So) We have a couple of things in the pipeline. What the (freak) else are we doing?”