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Speed Plans: Statues of God 12” (Iron Lung Records) We’ve carried several releases from Pittsburgh’s Speed Plans over the past few years, but if you haven’t checked them out until now, you’ve arrived to the party just in time. Statues of God is the record you want. I keep seeing the Repos’ name thrown around in relation to this record. Admittedly, that didn’t occur to me right off the bat… instead, I heard similarities to 80s bands like Negative FX, early Agnostic Front, and Youth of Today. But now that I think about it, this sounds a lot like the Repos. Which is to say they sound like the 80s bands I mentioned, but touches like the harmonized guitar leads in “Cleveland” could be deliberate homages to the Repos. I fucking love the Repos (I think I have every single one of their records, which is no mean feat) and I love this, but I don’t think you need to love the Repos in order to love Speed Plans. It’s just a raw, rampaging, nihilistic hardcore punk record, and even though I’ve been listening to this stuff for decades, it still sounds fresh and urgent to me. Maybe that’s because I’m boring or that my tastes aren’t that adventurous, but I prefer to think it’s because Speed Plans is just that good.