Review
Twenty Inch Burial
How Long Will We Laugh and Smile?

Immigrant Sun (2005) Kevin Fitzpatrick

Twenty Inch Burial – How Long Will We Laugh and Smile? cover artwork
Twenty Inch Burial – How Long Will We Laugh and Smile? — Immigrant Sun, 2005

Like all of you, when i think of Portugal, I think of three things: the architect Miguel von Hafe P'rez, tungsten mines, and metal. I know what you're thinking - I'm biased. Sure, we're all familiar with bands like Holocausto Canibal, Acromaniacos and Bizarra Locomotiva - all of which are named after famous Portuguese papal candidates. But no, be strong! Just because they're Portuguese, they're not necessarily the automatic "shizz".

Twenty Inch Burial's How Much Will We Laugh and Smile? is a pretty decent listen when there's nothing good on the Circulodefogo show. Their second full-length release, not including 2 EP's and the split release with New Jersey's With Resistance, How Much Will We Laugh and Smile? - hence fore to be known as Smile, because I'm just too goddamn lazy - shows a band not afraid to kick our respective pricks into the course red dust of Portugal with openers like "Five Forward" and "Letters of Discontempt.' It's enough to make me wish I was a young matador again - happily running through the streets of Lisbon with ripe tomatoes purchased at the local Safewayos.

Rui Miguel Br's knows how to belt 'em out with the best of 'em, and along with....ok, just admit it...if I told you the guitarists were Ricardo da Rocha Correia and Jo'o Pedro Fulg'ncio, are you really going to remember? I didn't think so, you racist scum. Just remember they're better than the guitarist from [insert your favorite not-very-good-band here], so the sooner you accept it, the better off you'll be.

I could go into more detail, but why? You already know you'll buy Smile. And why? Because they're from Portugal. And they'll kick your mama's dead ass.

Twenty Inch Burial – How Long Will We Laugh and Smile? cover artwork
Twenty Inch Burial – How Long Will We Laugh and Smile? — Immigrant Sun, 2005

Recently-posted album reviews

Cancer Bats

Give Me Dirt
Marshall Amplification PLC (2026)

ALBUM HIGHLIGHTS – “Bright Eyes of Gold”, “Give Me Dirt”, “Long Tooth”, “Fools Like You” Almost exactly two years ago, on 8th August 2024, Cancer Bats played Conne Island in Leipzig – a choice they would live to regret. Unbeknownst to them at the time, the centre had slowly become renowned for its radical politics and, more recently, the ban … Read more

Tyler Sonnichsen

The Dead Milkmen
J-Card Press (2026)

When I saw The Dead Milkmen at Toronto’s Diamond Club back in the late 1980s, the floor was a volatile, beautiful mess of colliding subcultures. It was like different species of house flies bumping into one another, wondering what the hell you were doing in the mason jar. You had suburban high school pocket-pen-protector pencil-neck nubile nerds, college radio snobs … Read more

Opus Kink

The Sweet Goodbye
So Recordings (2026)

ALBUM HIGHLIGHTS – “Come Over, Do Me Wrong”, “The Sweet Goodbye”, “I Have to Shine My Sunday Shoes”, “Crucify!” Opus Kink sound like nobody else. To call them “jazz punk” is to massively oversimplify it. In fact, there’s not much traditionally “punk” about them. If anything, it’s “noise rock”, but with traces of almost every other genre you could name. … Read more