Cel Ray Announce Debut Album Cel Rayzer, Share "Price of Gas"

Cel Ray have a debut album on the way, and the first preview does not waste a second pretending to be polite. The Chicago punks will release Cel Rayzer on July 24 via Exploding In Sound Records, and they have shared the album's first single, "Price of Gas."

Bandcamp lists the album as a 10-track release and clocks "Price of Gas" at one minute and 29 seconds, which is exactly the right amount of runway for this kind of thing. It snaps from herky-jerk new wave tension into a hardcore sprint, the kind of song that feels built for a basement PA that is already losing the fight.

The song's joke is also its point. In a statement published by Treble, vocalist Maddie Daviss called it "a rock opera from the perspective of an American man who is obsessed with the price of gas." She describes a character who collapses every private anxiety into one public grievance: the cost of living, the fantasy of control, the car as both escape route and trap.

That setup could turn into easy satire, but Cel Ray play it like a pressure leak. The band does not over-explain the bit or sand down the ugliness; they let the character get louder and smaller at the same time. It is very funny, then suddenly less funny, then funny again because the riff is still trying to kick the door off its hinges.

Cel Rayzer Tracklist

1. Gotta Get Away
2. Hot Gossip
3. Price of Gas
4. Toxic
5. Snake's Maw
6. Trash
7. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
8. Teen (Cult) Song
9. Phone Stuff
10. Treat Economy

The label fit makes sense, too. Exploding In Sound has long had room for bands that treat noise, hooks, and nerves as part of the same language, and Cel Ray's Bandcamp page files the record under punk without trying to flatten what makes the band twitchy.

Cel Ray also have Chicago-area dates on deck, including a July 24 record release show at Empty Bottle with Negative Scanner. That is a useful bit of sequencing: the album sounds, at least from its first blast, like it wants to be heard in a crowded room before anyone has time to get precious about it.