Mad Morning have released a new single titled “Painkiller,” and it’s less a piece of music and more a prescription filled with ferocious velocity. This isn’t your gentle, over-the-counter remedy. This is the stuff you keep behind lock and key, a bitter pill of distorted guitar and adrenalized rhythm that vocalist and guitarist Rob Jarvis delivers with unflinching conviction. The song’s central idea—sound as a psychoactive substance—is worn without a hint of apology.
It’s a strange thing, isn’t it? This surrender. The groove, anchored by Kevin Hein’s punishing drumming, doesn’t suggest you listen; it commands you to metabolize it. It takes hold with the mechanical efficiency of those old automatons from the 18th century, a relentless series of clicks and gears designed for a single, overwhelming purpose. The experience is total, a controlled demolition of conscious thought where the only thing left is the primal pulse running through your veins.
While the energy is riotous, the motive feels deeply solitary. It’s an escape inward, a way of “killing those feelings to hide” by cranking the volume past the point of introspection. This isn’t the sound of a communal party; it’s the sound of one person building a fortress of noise to keep the world’s quiet anxieties at bay. Mad Morning have crafted a brutal and exhilarating high, a numbing agent that works by being far louder and more insistent than the pain it’s meant to silence.
So as the final chord crashes and the feedback fades, you’re left with a kind of purified exhaustion. The cure works, but is the addiction to the rhythm any healthier than the ache it masks?
