A Pillar of Salt

The Thermals arrived at a specific American moment — the mid-2000s, the second Bush term, the Iraq War — and made an album that treated it with the fury it deserved. The Body, The Blood, The Machine is a concept record about fleeing a theocratic America, crackling with the specific anxiety of a country losing its mind.

A Pillar of Salt opens that album with a sprint: Hutch Harris's voice raw and high, the guitars buzzsaw-bright, the whole thing over in under two minutes. It's the kind of punk opener that makes you want to play the record again from the top the moment it ends.

The Thermals disbanded in 2017 after six albums. The Body, The Blood, The Machine remains their peak — one of the sharpest political punk records of its era, unfortunately as relevant now as the day it came out.