REVIEW: RHOADS – ‘No Justice’

There’s catharsis, and then there’s ‘No Justice’, the new scorched-earth EP from Thunder Bay’s RHOADS, the solo outlet of punk lifer Dale Carmichael. Across a blistering set of no-frills, gut-punch tracks, Carmichael revisits the ghosts that shaped him and invites them to scream through the amps.

This is punk in its rawest form. There’s no polish here, and that’s the point. These songs are jagged, barbed, and weirdly hilarious; taking aim at the absurdity of modern life one outburst at a time. Whether he’s railing against the courtroom injustice following his father’s death (No Justice), or mosh-pitting his way through the existential dread of hair loss and leafy greens, he injects every second with a kind of venom-soaked honesty that’s as gut-wrenching as it is weirdly life-affirming.

The production is appropriately coarse, but never sloppy. There’s a surprising clarity in the chaos, a sense that every thrash, shout, and crash has been built to carry something far weightier than noise. This is grief disguised as satire. Rage softened by absurdity. Think Black Flag if they binge-watched stand-up specials between rehearsals, or Dead Kennedys with more therapy and fewer filters.

‘No Justice’ is a purge dressed in distortion, a shout from the back of the room that refuses to be drowned out. And in a world that keeps asking for quiet, RHOADS answers back with exactly what we need: volume, truth, and a middle finger raised with purpose.