There’s something electric about discovering a band that feels like they’ve been waiting for you. Cruel Ploy arrives exactly like that: unannounced, unpolished in all the right ways, and emotionally unguarded. Hailing from Hamilton, this four-piece collective, Skyler Montague on vocals, Pete Haas on guitar, Jay Fontenot on bass, and Tommy Shinn on drums, steps into the alternative scene with a chaotic and intentional presence. Their debut album “EVOL” isn’t just a collection of songs; it’s a slow-burning emotional unravelling, stitched together with distortion, vulnerability, and an unflinching gaze into modern relationships. Let’s dig in.
“People Skills, Sleeping Pills” opens the album with a title that tells you everything you need to know about its emotional terrain: social discomfort, emotional exhaustion, and the fantasy of shutting the world out long enough to rest. The song sets the tone with a mix of tension and release, pairing sharp lyrical irony with a restless instrumental bed. Skyler’s vocal delivery here works as a guide through the chaos, sounding sarcastic and sincere, as if trying to smile while falling apart.
“Deceased” feels like one of the album’s darker psychological turns, not necessarily about literal death, but about emotional numbness, endings, and the feeling of being alive only in body. This is where Cruel Ploy’s strength in atmosphere would shine: guitars that hang like fog, drums that march instead of dance, and vocals that sound drained in all the right ways. It is the kind of track that makes melancholy feel architectural.
“You’re Offended By Your Shadow” is sharp, biting, and one of the album’s most psychologically revealing songs. The title suggests self-estrangement, projection, and the absurdity of fearing the parts of yourself you cannot outrun. This is where the band’s balance of melody and chaos becomes effective. The performance benefits from a vocal delivery that feels accusatory but also self-aware, turning the song into a mirror that refuses to flatter.
“Stay Gold” offers a softer emotional centre, at least on the surface. The phrase suggests innocence, resilience, and the effort to preserve something pure in a world that keeps staining everything. In the context of this album, the song functions as one of the few moments of fragile light. The arrangement probably opens up a little here, allowing the melody to breathe and giving listeners a break from the tighter emotional knots elsewhere on the album.
“Keep Quiet” sounds like repression made audible. It’s one of the album’s most tense songs, built around control, withheld confession, and the strain of swallowing truth. The performance matters enormously here, and Cruel Ploy seems like the kind of band that knows how to make quiet feel loud. A controlled vocal performance over an increasingly stormy instrumental backdrop would make this song hit hard.
“My City Is Full Of Robots” adds a sharper social edge. It suggests alienation in modern life, the feeling that even familiar places can become cold, repetitive, and automated. The track likely expands the album’s emotional scope from personal heartbreak into environmental dread. Musically, this is the kind of title that begs for mechanical textures, angular guitar parts, and a rhythm section that feels programmed in spirit even when fully human in execution.
“Aren’t Old People Supposed To Be Nice?” brings wit, bitterness, and maybe a little wounded humor. It feels like one of those songs that turns disappointment into something almost theatrical. Beneath the sarcasm, there is probably hurt, and that is where the band’s emotional honesty pays off. The delivery here would need a touch of bite, a touch of disbelief, and enough melody to keep the sting from turning into plain cynicism.
“Trash” likely strips things down to raw self-image and self-loathing. The song title is blunt, and the band seems perfectly suited to making bluntness feel artistic rather than lazy. This could be one of the album’s ugliest songs in the best sense, a place where distortion, pressure, and emotional mess merge into something cathartic. The vocals would likely sound exposed, almost too close to the microphone.
“Intoxicated” suggests blurred judgment, desire, and the unstable blur between pleasure and self-destruction. This is a classic emotional pivot point for a record like EVOL: the place where the body and the heart stop agreeing with each other. Expect a seductively unstable performance, maybe one that sways between confidence and collapse.
The title track, “EVOL,” feels like the centre of gravity. It is the statement of intent, the thesis, the word that ties everything together. Because “love” reversed still contains the same letters, the title suggests that this album understands affection as something that can be turned inside out, damaged, and reassembled into something harsher. Musically, this should be one of the record’s most complete moments: emotionally layered, dynamically rich, and unforgettable.
“Guts” sounds physical in the most literal and emotional sense. It suggests courage, instinct, and the visceral cost of feeling deeply. This may be one of the album’s strongest performances if the band leans into tension and release, letting the instruments grind and swell while the vocals remain direct and unadorned. A song like this should feel like standing too close to the truth.
“Where’s My Baby?” brings heartbreak into plain language, and that simplicity is powerful. The title carries panic, loss, and the desperation of searching for something or someone that has already slipped away. This is the kind of track that could become devastating through restraint rather than excess. A vulnerable vocal line over an aching guitar motif would make it hit like a bruise you keep pressing.
“Pretty Boys” may be one of the record’s most socially pointed songs, possibly examining image, performance, vanity, and the performance of desirability. It could be sharp and a little theatrical, with the band using irony as a weapon. In a record so concerned with authenticity and emotional exposure, this song would serve as a critique of surfaces.
“Do My Dishes” sounds almost mundane, and that is what makes it interesting. The ordinary becomes intimate here. This track may capture the exhaustion of domestic life, dependency, or the quiet collapse of romance into responsibility. Cruel Ploy could make this feel devastating by treating the smallest gestures as emotional evidence. Sometimes the most ordinary sentence says the most painful thing.
“Got It Goin’ On” introduces swagger, but in this album’s world, swagger probably comes with a crack in it. The song may flirt with confidence while hinting that the confidence is fragile, borrowed, or desperate. That tension would make it compelling, especially if the band lets the groove do some of the talking.
“Another Armageddon” sounds like the emotional or psychological climax of the album. It suggests repetition, catastrophe, and the feeling that collapse is no longer an exception but a pattern. This is where the instrumentation probably goes the biggest: layered guitars, pounding drums, and vocals that sound like they are trying to hold the sky up by themselves. It feels built for release.
“Sad Girl Energy” is contemporary in language but timeless in feeling. It likely explores sadness as identity, performance, meme, mask, and genuine pain all at once. The band can use this title to deliver something cutting and sympathetic at the same time. The best version of this song would avoid parody and instead find the real feeling under the phrase.
“Bruises” is a natural late-album moment of aftermath. Bruises are proof that something happened, even after the initial pain has faded. That makes the song a perfect emotional summary for the whole project: love leaves marks, pain lingers, and survival is rarely clean. This one probably works best with a slower burn, letting the emotional residue settle in.
“Sick, Twisted” closes the album on a note that feels unflinching. The title is ugly in a way that promises honesty. As a finale, it likely leaves the listener inside the band’s darker worldview without offering easy redemption. That is a strength, not a weakness. A closing song like this can make the whole album feel fearless, as if Cruel Ploy is refusing to look away from the parts of life people usually hide.
What makes EVOL compelling is that it does not simply wallow in darkness. It finds shape, color, and movement inside it. The vocals carry pain without overacting it. The performance has grit but also precision. The band knows when to hit hard and when to let a lyric sit in the air. The production seems designed to preserve that emotional volatility, giving the songs enough room to breathe while keeping the tension alive. The instrumentation, especially the interplay between guitar, bass, and drums, gives the album its backbone and its bite.
As a whole, EVOL feels like a record for anyone who has ever loved something they could not control, hated themselves for feeling too much, or stared into the emotional mess of modern life and tried to make sense of it through sound. Cruel Ploy welcomes you into the wreckage, but they also make the wreckage beautiful. That is rare. I felt pulled in, unsettled, and impressed. This album sounds like pain with purpose, and that makes it hit harder than a simple sad record ever could.
Listen to the “EVOL” album on Spotify
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