There’s a special kind of chemistry that only comes from life on the road, the kind that seeps into your soul after a hundred-plus nights of town after town. On Deface The Currency, the second collaboration between the Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, it’s the kind of chemistry that becomes explosive. Born from what drummer Brendan Canty called a gut instinct during a summer 2025 tour, the album captures a band that’s now stopped introducing itself and started finishing each other’s sentences. After roughly 150 shows in a year, the quartet comes across like a single, many-limbed organism built for glorious demolition.

The configuration is deceptively simple. Canty and bassist Joe Lally, both alumni of Fugazi, lock into tight, coiled grooves. Guitarist Anthony Pirog splashes color and abrasion in equal measure. Over it all, Lewis’ saxophone doesn’t so much solo; it testifies, it provokes, it sets small fires and then dances in the smoke. Their chemistry first flared in earnest at the Bell House in 2021, when Lewis joined the trio for a live workout of “Serpent Tongue.” What began as a guest spot ended up a fuse being lit. By the time they released their self-titled debut on Impulse! in 2024, the partnership already felt like it was meant to be. And Deface The Currency is what happens when inevitability spends a year in a van.

Recorded over a quick burst of sessions at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, Maryland, the album plays like a field report from a band that’s sharpened itself against the whetstone of the stage. There’s no easy genre labeling here, the closest you’re going to get is some kind of “jazz punk jam.” The grooves are thick and tensile, Lally’s basslines prowling along with purpose. Canty plays like someone who understands that drums can be used for both restraint and riot. Pirog alternates between crystalline melodies and cutting riffs. Lewis, meanwhile, moves from fiery lyricism to full-bodied squall, pushing the trio into spaces that feel improvised but predestined.

The title Deface The Currency suggests vandalism as philosophy, a refusal to accept the given value of things. Fittingly, the album treats structure as something to be bent, smeared, and re-stamped. After 150 shows, this band is no longer searching for chemistry, they’re forging alloy. And on Deface The Currency, they swing that hammer with ecstatic precision.