Ace Of Spit

Ace Of Spit

II

Sinkhole / Wombat Cock

***"I first heard about St. Louis garage rockers Ace of Spit in 2022 thanks to their Sophomore Lounge-released self-titled debut album, a wild punk rock LP that sucked up and spat out surf rock, proto-punk, and even a bit of power pop on us all (it snuck onto my year-end list and everything). Four years later, Ace of Spit kicked off 2026 by releasing their sophomore album Ace of Spit II, this time co-released by legendary St. Louis music venue The Sinkhole’s record label and something called “Wombat Cock”. If anything, Ace of Spit II is an even greater commitment to the twin tornados of freewheeling garage punk and “spaghetti western” vibes; with one major exception, the quartet (Brett, Scott, Steve, and Gabe) spend all of this LP’s twenty-seven minutes prowling the fabled “Cramps to MC5” spectrum. The album’s first three songs are all “rippers”, to be sure, but the ever-so-subtle desert-rockabilly sound is already there, and it only gets more obvious in “Diaspora Rock”, “Road to Reno”, and the genuinely-Western-evoking “Past Continuous”. That one “major exception” I mentioned earlier is “Parts List”, a bizarre excursion into fuzzed-out, fried electronica (with Link Wray riffs over top of it, of course) for three minutes; no idea why that’s smack dab in the middle of the record, but I don’t mind it–and besides, everything else rocks, so who cares?"—Rosy Overdrive

Ace Of Spit

Ace Of Spit

Sophomore Lounge

***The debut full-length of Link Wray-scented desert guitar wreckage from GABE KARABELL (LUMPY & THE DUMPERS, FRIED E/M). "ACE OF SPIT has been playing regular gigs around South St. Louis for the last five years. Typically you’d find the band inside a basement, burned-out warehouse, or one of the dive bars that still permits smoking, mangling a Sanford Clark or Link Wray cover—perhaps closing out a punk bill because the city ran out of 80s-style hardcore bands. 'Oh, it’s that Spaghetti-Western band again...'" "All that went away in 2020, so Ace of Spit hid out in a basement and wrote this, their self-titled debut full-length (following a scant scattering of home-dubbed, hand-distributed demo cassettes in editions of don't-even-try), which probably would’ve stayed buried deep inside The Sinkhole if their cohorts at Sophomore Lounge hadn’t fortuitously (if not bizarrely) decided to take interest in the sessions' unbridled stink 'n' spirit." "The songs on Ace of Spit chug with a free-wheeling swagger, swaying loosely on the rails and yearning for a time of tweed Fender amps and warbled tape echo. Dragged through the decades, hamstrung by digital distortion and the band’s musical ineptitude (perhaps "enhanced" with the help of available studio substances), small fragments of these undefined and impressionistic eras still shine through from the cracks in the tracks." "Was any of it real, or just a nostalgic dreamland? Some imagined place and time you long for while being punished by a Dumpers super-fan in the Arizona desert? Dreaming of Apollo Bay...