MUSIC YOU SHOULD HEAR (2025)
On "He Watches in Silence", God Complex from Liverpool cook up some absolutely mental metalcore with some vicious deathcore snarl to spice things up. Each track sounds fresh and distinct from the others, which is more than I can say even for some metalcore bands I find quite talented. The percussion and guitars pack an intense one-two punch in every track, boosted just enough by the mixing to feel some massive pressure and oomf from the breakdowns and start-and-stop sections without it totally mutilating the mix and burying the other players. Special mention has to go to the snare and kick drums, which makes my aging-geezer-bad-bones-having body feel like breaking out into windmill kicks and kickflips in the pit. In addition to this, there's also these cool little moments that aren't quite "nu metal" in sound, but feel very influenced by the kind of simplistic chugging riffs Jim Root and Mick Thomson were belting out at the height of Slipknot's sound. I always love hearing metalcore show some love to the more alt metal sounds, especially if they can pull it off without just becoming another throwback nu-metalcore band. I strongly recommend this one to any fans of more rhythmic and head banging metalcore that really gets your blood pumping!
The Body has always been a band that is always the same and yet always different in a strange way. Their music is so instantly recognizable, but throughout their career there has been a very consistent desire to experiment and incorporate new textures and genre influences into their sound. Back when they first collaborated with Full of Hell, I became aware of just how perfect their particularly strange style of drone/doom/sludge/noise metal lends itself to other bands' sound, serving as a texture or backbone in the same way that Merzbow's noise elevates the atmosphere and passion of the various Boris collaborations he's been a part of.
Over the years, The Body has gone on to collaborate with several artists, such as the aforementioned Full of Hell, Uniform, Thou, Krieg, Big Brave, Dis Fig, and now most recently Intensive Care. Intensive Care is one of those bands I personally feel has not yet gotten their flowers, and I hope this record will pick up traction over the year and convince more people to check them out. I first caught them live years ago opening for Iron Lung and Bastard Noise in a warehouse in Richmond VA, and good lord what an intense performance. There's something about two piece bands that just know how to create an ungodly amount of synergy and intensity from their much more raw and unrefined sound to make up for the lack of members to round out the shape of a musical composition, especially in fields like metal/hardcore and noise rock. Born from the ashes of The Endless Blockade, one of my personal favorite powerviolence bands ever, Intensive Care is much more sludgy, noisy, and scummy in their approach, with an underlying sense of terror and cynicism driving their work.
Now, with this record, these four musicians band together to bring out the best qualities of each other's work. Chip's infamous banshee howls work wonders for setting the stage before Intensive Care take charge and start bellowing out misanthropic diatribes in guttural vocals poisoned by years of disappointment. Each song, in true fashion for The Body, feels like variations on a theme, and yet never feels like it repeats itself. This whole album would truly kick ass to hear live, as it feels like failure and spite building into increasingly desperate attacks on the listener's ears and hearts. I'm shocked the reviews on this one so far have been a bit lukewarm, as I think this is some of the strongest work from both bands not just in recent memory, but in the scope of their entire careers. If you like sludgy, atmospheric metal heavily informed by the sonic soundplay and instrumental stylings of industrial music, you should absolutely give this one a shot. Of the albums I've heard from this year so far, it is easily my favorite.
I'm certain I'm not alone in saying Lady Gaga's early work has left an indelible watermark on not just personal memories, but also the cultural zeitgeist of the late 2000s/early 2010s. Of all the contemporary pop megastars, I can think of few that had such a concise and sharp sense of visual aesthetics and choreography in their promotional videos and live concerts. While much can be written on her performances and visual splendor, it all would mean nothing if she hadn't also known how to write a damn tune. As such, as her identity became more fractured throughout the 2010s, her artistic flair began to subsume her more aural qualities, leading to a string of albums that while by no means terrible felt like witnessing a sleepwalker who had fallen too comfortably into a routine.
Here on Mayhem, Gaga embraces that fractured sense of identity, creating a rich kaleidoscope of musical influences and tones to create what I would argue is her best work since The Fame Monster. Throughout its runtime, Mayhem manages to find ways to synthesize not just her past with her present, but also the last 50 years of pop music and its greatest titans into something beautiful and new. Even the slower, more "personal" tracks feel in service of the album's essence, and reveal a much more earnest sense of complex identity and duality between the front-facing "Gaga" persona and the real woman behind it all than was previously attempted on records like Joanne and Chromatica. I'm not one to spend lots of money on stadium tours, preferring much more intimate shows in bars and houses, but I can't deny I'm considering saving up my pennies now to potentially see this album's greatest hits like Disease, Abracadabra, How Bad Do U Want Me,and Die With a Smile performed live. In a time when glamorous and bombastic pop music has felt like it is on a downward slope, I am happy to report this patron saint of the genre has returned with a vengeance, and is living her truth louder and prouder than ever. Truly spectacular album that reminded me of how fantastic pop music can be when given the time to be arranged carefully into something truly and honestly substantial.
