Originally a solo vehicle for veteran North Carolina punk scenester Ben Carr, Personality Cult has since morphed into the fully formed beast you hear on Dilated, available May 2 on Dirtnap.
“Even though it’s slightly different from what we normally do, ‘Anger’ is probably my favorite song on Dilated,” says Carr of the band’s latest single. “I remember having Darklands by the Jesus And Mary Chain and George Jones’ greatest hits on repeat during the time it was written.”
Carr has been knocking around the Chapel Hill/Carrboro underground since the late 2000s, stirring up trouble with the likes of Last Year’s Men, Paint Fumes and Natural Causes. He unveiled Personality Cult in 2018 with a self-titled debut on the U.K.-based Drunken Sailor imprint. Wisconsin punk label Dirtnap snapped up Personality Cult for 2020’s New Arrows and has yet to experience buyer’s remorse.
Dilated was recorded in Brooklyn at the Daisy Chain studio with producer Jeff Burke (Marked Men, Radioactivity) and longtime Personality Cult collaborator Ian Rose engineering. Carr acknowledges that it was the first time he actually “fell in love” with the studio environment. And it shows on “Anger.”
“I wanted the vocals to be dense with harmonies and for the recording to have a lot of different guitar tones,” he says. “I’m pretty sure this was the first time we grabbed a 12-string electric—and we ended up using it a lot on the record because it fit so well.”
We’re proud to premiere Personality Cult’s “Anger.”
—Hobart Rowland
