Heaven Is Earth

Recording information: Dead Air Studios; God City Studios; Miner Street Recordings; Sonelab.Unknown Contributor Roles: Mark O'Brien; Andrew Duggan; Chris Tenerowicz; Alan Huck; Patrick Kindlon; Benny Tate; Mary Brulatour; Kaila Stone.D. Boon of the Minutemen once famously said, "Punk is whatever we made it to be," and Self Defense Family are one band who appear to have taken Boon's words to heart. The group's second album as Self Defense Family (after the collective recorded three LPs and a stack of singles and EPs as End of a Year), 2015's Heaven Is Earth, is certainly punk rock in spirit, though this band clearly has no interest in the standard template of four/four stomp and a hail of downstroked guitar. On Heaven Is Earth, Self Defense Family build a chain-link fence of sound, with decisive bass and drum patterns woven through guitar figures strummed or pummeled into minimal melodic structures as vocalist and first-among-equals Patrick Kindlon rants and bellows over it all. If it's