Liquid Mike - Hell Is An Airport (2025)

Liquid Mike’s new LP Hell Is an Airport proves once again that nobody distills big-hearted indie rock into bite-sized bangers quite like this Marquette crew. Across 14 songs in just over 27 minutes, the band turns small-town frustrations, tour misadventures, and flashes of nostalgia into hooks that hit as hard as their guitars. While many bands mellow with age, Hell Is an Airport might be the loudest Liquid Mike record yet.

A track-by-track feature over at Consequence offers sharp and fun insights into the album’s stories. Opener Instantly Wasted recalls a nerve-wracking overnight drive to their first tour, while Lit from the Wrong End captures the moment you realize you can’t sled, party, or recover like you did at twenty. The Joyce Manor–esque Crop Circles and the ridiculously catchy Double Dutch mine family dynamics and small-town cycles with the sharp eye of someone both inside and outside of it. Elsewhere, Maple sketches burnout characters (Grand Am), dying malls (Selling Swords), and friends spinning out (Bad Lung), balancing empathy with wit. Meteor Hammer is a reminder of why I fell for the band in the first place, proof that they’ve stayed close to their roots while still pushing their songwriting forward.

Even when the lyrics lean anxious — sleepless nights, dead-end jobs, the fear of fading momentum — the songs themselves surge ahead with choruses too sticky to feel weighed down. By the time the whirlwind title track closes the record, Liquid Mike has bottled everything that makes this band so exciting.