Kevin Bronson on April 24th, 2019

2

Last year, Houston native Blake Stokes made the astute decision to make his band more search engine-friendly. The singer-guitarist dispensed with the name TEST — authors of the beautifully abrasive 2017 album “Brain In / Brain Out” — and formed Jagged Baptist Club with the lineup of Morgan Ponder (drums), Josh Boyd (keyboards) and CJ Ramsey (bass).

Jagged Baptist Club’s sound is as gritty as the place it was conceived — a windowless lockout in the industrial city of Vernon. The paint-peeling new single “Running on Synthetic” shivers and shakes with epileptic fury, as if the quartet were locked inside that room and clawing at the walls to get out.

The song is the first taste of JBC’s debut album, “Reptile Super Show,” due June 28 via L.A.’s Chain Letter Collective. With pulsating bass, drums and keyboard lines and explosive riffs (and the occasional saxophone), Jagged Baptist Club’s thrashy post-punk is the sound of demons being beaten into submission. Stokes, who went through a period of alcohol abuse while living in that lockout, is now sober and a father. He keeps his lyrical outlook largely upbeat. “I still firmly believe in the power of music to change lives, to save lives,” he says.

The black-and-white video for “Running on Synthetic,” directed by Styles Wolff Baker, keeps it raw and real.

||| Watch: The video for “Running on Synthetic”