The House Flies Find Belonging in Discomfort With “Derelict Crawl”

The House Flies’ “Derelict Crawl” introduces the next chapter of the Illinois band with a track that feels immediate, physical, and deliberately unsettled. Built around a driving post-punk pulse, dense guitars, and the insistent refrain “We don’t belong,” the song establishes the darker emotional architecture of the band’s forthcoming second album, Lions and Ore. It is direct without becoming simplistic, using repetition as a way of making alienation feel less like an abstract idea and more like something lodged in the body.

The Moline-based four-piece, Alex Riggen on vocals and guitar, Burnie Eckhardt on guitar, Ozzie Woods on bass, and Nick Pompou on drums, approaches the song with a sharper sense of scale than their earlier material. “Derelict Crawl” is particularly significant as the first single from the new album and the first full-length House Flies release featuring Eckhardt. His guitar presence contributes to the wider, heavier sound the band is developing, while the rhythm section keeps the track moving with a persistent tension.

The song travels through disconnected images of dial tones, worn leather, summer heat, and physical collapse. Those details create an atmosphere where ordinary objects become evidence of deterioration. The repeated “We don’t belong” works as the song’s emotional centre, suggesting displacement without explaining it away. There is something compelling in that restraint: the listener is given fragments and sensations, then left to assemble their own understanding of what has gone wrong.

The production reinforces that uneasy feeling. Quiet drop-down passages interrupt the heavier guitar sections, creating breathing space before the momentum returns. That contrast also offers a glimpse into Lions and Ore, an album described through longer arrangements, rural imagery, patient repetition, and wider dynamic shifts. The song therefore functions effectively as an introduction without exposing the record’s entire emotional range.

“Derelict Crawl” prospers because it understands that darkness does not require theatrical excess. The House Flies find power in rhythm, texture, repetition, and carefully chosen images, producing a track that feels grounded in Midwestern unease while remaining open to the broader language of post-punk and gothic alternative music.