Minotaur share debut album "Pet Smells" alongside a full track-by-track rundown

Minotaur, a post-hardcore band based in Regina, Canada, put their debut full-length up for an early listen on Wednesday (29), one day ahead of its official release. Titled "Pet Smells", the record collects eight songs and lands October 30 as a joint release between Grind Central Records and Potato Cat Records.

The album pulls from punk, screamo and grunge, aiming for a dynamic and cathartic take on post-hardcore, with lyrics circling identity, guilt, self-acceptance and the value of small personal rewards. Pearl Bogdan performed, recorded and mixed the entire thing, while Aki McCullough, known for work with ameokama and Crippling Alcoholism, handled mastering at Nu House Studios.

Alongside the premiere, Pearl laid out a track-by-track breakdown explaining where each song came from. Some of the material goes back more than a decade: the oldest cut was first demoed in 2014, and another went through key changes, tempo shifts and repeated lyric rewrites before being added to the tracklist on an impulse after nearly being scrapped altogether.

The rundown also digs into some unusual production choices. One song was recorded and mixed entirely on cassette recorders, with the guitar plugged straight into the machine instead of being miked through an amp, and only two microphones used across the whole track, one on drums and one for vocals. "A good record is a finished record," Pearl said of that stripped-down approach. Elsewhere, the lyrics touch on a complicated relationship with affirmations, thirteen years of Catholic schooling, quitting and un-quitting smoking, and the short-lived rush of waiting for a package in the mail.