Just your luck. After narrowly escaping a horde of bloodthirsty, genetically mutated rats in a nuclear-ravaged future, the hazmat suited authorities that have saved you take off their helmet to reveal a grotesque, rodent-humanoid face, licking its lips with salivating want. It’s a nightmare scenario familiar to many women in the here and now, as well as in the dystopian tomorrow.

The schlocky, twist ending to 1984’s Rats: Night of Terror equally plays as a parable to the two-faced slimeballs that clog up the dating world, exposing their true, manipulatively weasel-selves after a honeymoon blitz of love boming and cloying affection. A charitable interpretation perhaps, but the timely warning to the ‘rats’ that walk among us aren’t lost on Kiwi punk quartet DEB5000, including lines from the original trailer in their fiery assault on abusive creeps on initial teaser ‘Rats’. A supergroup consisting of members of Kitsunegari, Natural Glow, Moron Says What, and Blame Thrower, their debut EP Debutante sees the group scour the contemporary rot for tunes about termites, IBS, and the perennial alertness to unwanted, male attention. Donning traditional debutante ball gown dress, their scent for the fetid sees ‘high-society’ as entrenched in squalor as the rest of us great unwashed.

DEB5000 tear through each of Debutante‘s five tracks with turbo precision, each riff hammering raucously and every lick raising the drama with feverish electricity. Tracks like ‘Bad Guts’ and ‘Vigilant’ are glorious rushes of exemplary punk rock vigour which pummel unmercifully, given further adrenalin by singer and lead guitarist Jessica Dew’s acutely volatile solos. The fury takes a brief detour into a more dreamy, slacker direction on the fanciful ‘Wild Stallyn (Keanu)’, a love letter to the Bill & Ted and Speed star that provides a welcome respite from the acerbic attack that otherwise dominates the EP. Their lyrical pugilism is all held together by mordant humour and feminist charge, exquisitely captured on ‘Termite Queen’, a punk paean to lofty, insect royalty free from the patriarchal shackles conceived by Man, clips from the peculiar 1971 satire-documentary The Hellstrom Chronicle adding intriguing fuel to the thematic veneration for how the bugs do things.

Debut EP’s don’t get much better than this. DEB5000 have unleashed a wild ride of acidic humour and authentic, punk swagger that’s lean enough to never allow a dull moment and places Debutante confidently as one of the definitive documents of the Tāmaki Makaurau punk scene.