What is up with Snooper is that they are absolutely rocking, and their iconic kid Punk Bug Rock radio wave crush montage collage entourage espionage action is somehow always fresh and electrifying. If you have not picked up on this wave of new energy from Nashville, Tennessee, yet, now is the time to acclimate. For there is no future without Snooper, the vision of anarchic whimsy is both chaotic and inviting in its inevitability.
Releasing their latest album Worldwide on October 3, 2025, through Third Man Records, it feels like a full realization of this group, who have been rampaging through the airwaves pretty noisily since their first breakout headlining set for Cobra Man at the 2023 Thrasher Worble World Tour.
Back then, they had two EPs, both their own —the surprisingly well-named 2020’s Music for Spies and the self-titled 2021’s Snõõper, which feels like an ’80s Bond flick with a musical score by members of the Manson family. It is this exact image that carves out the niche in which Snooper exists in the current music landscape. They have an overproduced, distortion-heavy sound that attracts an ADHD-type audience. Those whose attention span is a blip of a pixel on a liquid crystal display rather than a well-trained mind will find solace in the hazy brain bath that is Snooper’s distorted bass chords and double-time drumming. Each sound is flat, funky, fuzzy, or otherwise distorted, but when they all come together, the effect is a coalescence of discordance that somehow perfectly accentuates itself.
The chaos is present in the music, but is also its own instrument, as in the off-tone whistle notes in “Company Car,” the barking dogs in “Guard Dog,” and the space-opera eeriness hiding behind the electric typhoon that makes up the background of “Star 69.” All of this is proof that, within the chaotic and irreverent presentation of Snooper, lie the underpinnings of creative tenacity. They have captured a spark similar to the unleashed possibilities of Kid Pix and vintage Kellogg’s commercials.
Altogether, Worldwide is a larger release than Snooper’s previous work, and because of the band’s cycle of single releases, many of the tracks on this album have been previously released. This leads one to think critically about which songs were excluded from the album rather than those chosen. The sprawling kitchen-sink sound of 2023’s “Waste,” but two other tracks, “Company Car” and “Online,” both found on Worldwide. Upon listening to their entire recent discography, it seems that the music chosen for the most recent release is, aesthetically, more… electric.
There is a shock or jolt of hard static power running through all the tracks in Worldwide, a feeling that is subdued, frazzled out, or mellowed in some of Snooper’s other, earlier tracks. Look at Music for Spies, which is arguably a more polished and recognizable sound aesthetic (though that likely is in part due to its 7-minute length), or the self-titled Snõõper, which feels like an upside-down episode of Clarence or Ed, Edd, N Eddy. There is a certain suburban adolescent brightness in the foundation of this EP that has definitely grown up, gained power while losing carelessness in Worldwide.
Overall, Worldwide is quite successful in defining Snooper as a band and creating a catalog of sounds that define and sculpt this eclectic portal from fantasy bug land. Where they originally had spunk for the carefree bluesy sound they produced in juxtaposition with the quick marching power of their drums and bass line, they have now reformed. Snooper has turned from a hive swarm of chaotic and eclectic electro-watermelon Grunge into something with more purpose. A phalanx of marching energy, begging anyone to join them in exploiting and exploring the strange nostalgia of a swinging tune and a sound grain filter. That is why Cryptic Rock gives Snooper’s Worldwide 5 out of 5 stars.
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