Caviar is a reminder that punk doesn’t need reinvention so much as ignition. Heavy Lungs strip the form down to its classic bones - bass, guitar, drums, and one feral frontman - and manage to sound like the end of the world. It’s an album built from raw ingredients that haven’t changed since The Stooges, yet feels like a live grenade going off in your lap. The sheer noise of it is exhilarating. Danny Nedelko’s voice doesn’t resemble any other frontman currently working. It’s full-body, white-knuckle delivery, somehow both wildly theatrical and deeply sincere. He sounds like he’s in actual pain, and it’s riveting, raucous, funny as hell, and as exhausting as a marathon in Doc Martens.

Lyrically, this is a record split between two modes: first, the grim, underpaid reality of grinding out a job you hate; second, the blissful fantasy of wealth, glamour, and indulgence. Mr. Famous is a song about slogging through a menial job while waiting for fame to arrive, sung with deadpan delivery so bratty it could’ve been lifted from a school playground, Nedelko repeatedly shouting “Boring! Boring! Boring!” like a tantrum. Yes Chef recreates the stress of a boiling kitchen into three and a half minutes of riffs that hit like a thrown chair. The chaos of modern work, the dream of glamour, the need to blow off steam before you combust are all here loud and thrashing. This is also some of the most enormous production you’ll hear on a punk record this year. Get Out sounds like a building collapsing. There’s no sermonizing here, no grandstanding politics, but the working-class frustration seeps through every scream, and rather than preach about it, Heavy Lungs choose to throw a party in the wreckage.