What is grunge in 2026? Something behind glass at a museum. A flannel shirt on the wall, a faded poster in the bedroom of a kid who grew up and never bothered to tear it down. People handle it with reverence, quote it, spin it at vinyl nights somewhere between the second and third pour — always carrying that same ache: once, they knew how; once, it sounded real; once, somebody actually lived it. The genre calcified inside its own myth, its own filth, its own torn denim, and whoever dared move it seemed condemned to copycat work or parody. The Del-Viles seized the thing by the throat, rattled it awake, and hauled it onto the dance floor.

Their latest album, “It’s Just a Kiss-Off,“ makes it clear from the very first seconds that what is happening here is a total reshaping. A ragged rhythm, native to street rock, runs as a common thread through the entire record, yet the substance of that rhythm shifts from track to track—rock gives way to blues, blues yields to disco, disco flows into a ballad. The album is constructed so that the black leather of a biker jacket turns out to be lined with sequins. And this sensation—leather over glitter, toughness over dance—is the central intrigue of the record. The album holds eleven tracks, which is a fairly substantial body of work, but I will single out the ones that deserve attention first and foremost.

The opening track, “The City,” hits like a backhand slap. The roar of guitars detonates the space; tense surges alternate with sharp pauses, and this relentlessness instantly conjures a city where life runs at full throttle. The track ignites in an instant—and cuts off just as instantly, leaving behind the ringing silence of the speakers. As an album opener, it is a flawless move: the listener has barely had time to learn anything about the record, yet is already pulled in.

“What You Got” keeps the fractured, defiant line but lets R’n’B in—and here the first trick begins. Blues seeps through the fabric of street rock, and it is blues with a distinct retro aftertaste. A glamorous jazz intonation in the middle of a garage sound is a risky move, but The Del-Viles pull it off: they channel the blues mood through their own filter, preserving the electric-guitar nerve.

“Two-Tone Dress” is the album’s central, breakthrough single. Here, rock sounds at full force: hard, ringing, brutal. The danceability of the preceding tracks recedes, giving way to pure rock attack. Biker jackets, bandanas, long hair—the entire visual code of heavy rock is read straight from the sound. The Del-Viles know how to play hard—genuinely hard—with no rose-tinted clouds in sight.

Fourth track, “Wild,” — the rock goes slack, picks up a groove. Aggression exits; what rushes in is pure, reckless mischief — bright, contagious, almost juvenile in how little it cares. Strip it down and you get disco wearing a rock costume, three guys with guitars who decided to raise hell. The kind of song that makes you howl at your own reflection, shake something loose, recharge.

“Don’t Hang Around” brings the blues back—but a different kind of blues. Hard, charismatic, with a sumptuous solo that unfolds slowly and deliciously. The rocker slips into lyricism here, yet it is a lyricism steeped in character: nostalgia sounds through a scorched guitar hum, through drive, through a sense of height—as if they are playing on a skyscraper rooftop at sunset. A worthy piece with a delicate patina of nostalgia.

“Charlotte” is electric drive in its purest form. A breakneck tempo, the sensation of hurtling toward a goal, sweeping everything in its path. The track conveys the fever of a man in love racing across the entire city in search of leather jeans and a biker jacket, knocking over furniture—and that fever is contagious. Love screams about itself here; whispering is contraindicated.

“Skeleton” is the most high-octane track on the album. Authentic grunge wrenched from the gothic aesthetics of horror films and vampire movies. Dark corners, hidden secrets, a drop of fear and plenty of battle. Tracks like this are the stuff legends are born from and plots are invented around.

“Go Figure” is grunge with a retro gloss, a return to the origins, to the time when rock still conquered world stages. A soul’s cry, ravaged by furious desire, laced with irony and a momentum that keeps building—a red sports car racing toward an unattainable beauty for whose kiss you would give everything.

The closing track, “River Seine,” is the complete opposite of everything that came before it. A ballad. Tender, quiet, with a simple acoustic guitar. The musicians set aside their electronics, and the vocalist offers up pure, dreamy feelings. There is nothing left to protest, nowhere left to chase. A small, rosy cloud of lyricism—in a rain-soaked concrete city.

“It’s Just a Kiss-Off” is an album in the business of blurring borders. Blues, disco, and retro flicker through the grunge fabric, announcing themselves with a hard beat. A glamorous dress has made friends here with a rusted, rock&roll guitar. And the record’s chief value lies in proving that a genre long bolted to a museum wall is capable of moving, shedding its skin, and stepping onto the dance floor. In 2026, grunge needs a new approach, a second wind—and The Del-Viles deliver it.

One could quibble that the album occasionally places too much trust in its own energy: several tracks run on the same ragged rhythm, and by the middle of the record this device risks becoming predictable. The shifts from aggression to lyricism sometimes happen abruptly—and while “River Seine” in the finale reads as a precise, calibrated contrast, in the album’s midsection the genre leaps can look slightly hurried. Then again, there is an honesty in that very haste: The Del-Viles play as though they are afraid to stop, as though a pause would kill the drive. And as long as they keep running—you want to run after them. When an album proves that grunge can be a discotheque, a club, and a retro film all at once, the minor rough edges cease to matter. Because the main thing has already happened: the genre has shifted from its place.

*This review was made possible by SubmitHub