Razorcake Magazine This album had me on the fence the first time through. The singers voice is nondescript; I couldn't place where I thought I'd heardthe sound before. I was confused. My confusion became clarity upon further listens. Prickly guitars, stoccato minor chord picking, and a bomb ass rhythm section that bolts everything into place. "We Are The Collapse" has a keyboard part that kicks you in the back of the head when you least expect it. Dischord could have easily put this out in the early '90s. There's a whole lot to like about this release, but the tension between the rhythm section and the guitars lifts Bayonets from the "above average" category to "highly listenable." -Josh Benke

Seattle band New Fangs' live shows have built quite a following, and their debut full-length, Bayonets, translates that energy well. The band's pedigree shines, with hints of the brutal beat and pure noise freak outs of guitarist/vocalist Dave Bessenhoffer and bassist Karlis Gailitis' much beloved previous bands (The Blow Up and Tractor Sex Fatality), tempered with the true garage cool of bands like Thee Flying Dutchmen, guitarist Kimberly Morrison's former digs. The interplay of Bessenhoffer and Morrison's one-two punch, always-seem-just-about-to-fall-apart-and-then-up-and-bite-you-on-the-ass guitar lines over Gailitis and drummer Ken Viste's rock-solid, sinuously muscular rhythm backdrops goes a long way to capturing the spark of classics like The Fall and Drive Like Jehu, as well as local heroes Popular Shapes or Charming Snakes. Bessenhoffer's tommy gun stacatto exclamations almost add their own layer of percussion to the songs and the lyrics have a good mix of toss off one-liner-ness and sub rosa menace ("Set fire to the amplifier / Stab your synthesizer in the neck") that settle into your brain more than once while listening to the album. The standout tracks on Bayonets, however, occur when Bessenhoffer's snarling shouts, which on their own can get slightly similar sounding, mix in with more hook-laden gang melodies and borderline girl-group backups on "Kiss Me Kodiak," "Paper Skulls" and "Better Yet," and on the album's great closing title track, in which the duel vocal interplay ends up sounding like an awesome argument between Funhouse-era Iggy Pop and Ian Curtis. Bayonets is pretty sharp.

MercurialSound.com I love “Bayonets”. I love it now and I loved it a month ago when the New Fangs first sent it to me for review. Now, in this past month of extreme slackdom, of which “Bayonets” was a strong and consistent soundtrack, I was expecting something big. I thought that they’d be fucking huge by now, the talk of the town. Yet a month has passed and only one significant thing has happened: The New Fangs have become the most underrated band in Seattle. Blending the manic surf-punk of the Dead Kennedys with the shit-hot coolness of the Murder City Devils, the New Fangs have crafted a sound that is dark, menacing and utterly hip. This is the type of music that Nick Cave would make if he were a seventeen year old skateboarder with a jones for George Romero and old Gidget flicks. I know that that’s a stretch. Just stick with me. “Bayonets” is packed with apocalyptic tension, guitars wailing like neighborhood watch sirens, drums that echo like gunshots and lyrics seemingly ripped from some deranged cult leader’s manifesto. “If the music doesn’t kill you then the dancing will”, lead singer David Bassenhoffer promises in lead track “We are the collapse”. “Gather ’round for the reading of the will”. The obsessive fascination with slasher-movie imagery, recently prominent in the local scene, is taken to new artistic heights in the hands of these sick slicksters. Every nook and cranny of this album is haunted by ghouls and low-lifes. Vampires, grave robbers, a mysterious black light. They all struggle for space in the New Fangs paradise by the T.V. light. Maybe I’m imagining this lack of attention? Perhaps I’m simply tuned into the wrong station and “Bayonets” is a local smash? But as far as I can tell, the general public is still blissfully unaware of the terror that walks beside them, the bombs that fall from the sky and the death rattle booming from below. And that’s a bloody shame.