Ex-Breathers are titans amidst their surrounding Tallahassee scene, and their shadow slowly crept up the coast last fall when they released the 11-minute long 7″, ExBx. The band played a slew of CMJ shows and were, in certain circles, one of the most talked-about acts during that exhausting week back in 2014. A year later, Ex-Breathers are back with Past Tense, an album that displays all of the same hard-fought tenacity as ExBx without sweating the run-time. This is a hardcore record, but despite the fact that these songs are acerbic and sometimes lyrically unintelligible, they all carry a weighty message. Guitarist and vocalist David Settle addressed one of those messages today when the band posted their album stream (which premiered via Spin) to Facebook. The statement is a response to Whirr’s recent transphobic tweets directed at the Olympia-based punk band G.L.O.S.S.

PS fuck Whirr. Forced Binaries (track 8) is about (among a few other things) transphobia and the bullshit societal norms that a lot of people can’t get past to treat other humans decently. Static Machines (track 2) is about boring, heartless punk/indie/art that doesn’t have anything new or interesting to say. Both of them apply in this situation. (-David)

Settle also encouraged fans to read the album’s lyric sheet on Bandcamp. Justin Pizzoferrato (Speedy Ortiz, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Krill) produced Past Tense; stream it in full below.

Past Tense is out 10/23 via Exploding in Sound/Hex Records.