Jail Faith are masters of agitation. The Virginia-based duo of Warren Jones and Parker Black has spent the previous couple of years grinding established tropes of noise, rap, and dance music to shreds. Although they’ve often flirted with established tune constructions, probably the most chilling moments of their catalog let their tracks spiral into chaotic collages of noisy abstractions and misshapen rhythms. Even after they cease screaming, their instrumentals are terrifying on their very own.
Onerous Industrial B.O.P., their new venture on Lee Gamble’s UIQ label, pushes Jail Faith additional into this uncharted territory, foregrounding the brittle noise and teeth-rattling sound design that has at all times been an unsettling undercurrent of their music. On among the duo’s earliest work collectively, like 2016’s Cage W Mirrored Bars, their queasy reflections of hardcore and rap inhabited the identical universe that spawned noise-pop experimenters Black Clothes and New York boundary-pushers like Kill Alters or Machine Lady. However Onerous Industrial B.O.P. looks like the subsequent step in an ongoing evolution of their sound, pushing them additional into seasick noise and cochlea-shredding distortion.
From opener “Chunk” it’s clear that they’re drifting into the outer realms of digital experimentation. It begins with an unsettling synth drone that feels like a snippet of a Tangerine Dream movie rating enjoying from a pay-phone receiver and solely will get extra menacing from there, piling on distorted mumbling, distant screaming, and piercing, atonal textures. Tracks like “Banshee, Pale Fireplace, Touchdown” lock into legible rhythms (and also you may make out a lyric or two if you happen to hear carefully), however even these moments are overwhelming and unusual, scuffed with bristly electronics and ominous drones. Aided partially by collagist producer S280F (aka Lilith Treglia), Black and Jones conjure up sounds gloomier and extra hair-raising than a lot of their prior catalog. Onerous Industrial B.O.P. affords little respite.
All this chaos is by design. Jail Faith have mentioned that they think about the report as a provocation akin to the onerous bop that challenged the jazz of the Nineteen Fifties. Their music demonstrates a aware need to upend established types. Whereas earlier information tried to bridge the disparate worlds of experimental rap, hardcore techno, and different aggressive types, tracks like “Survival, Depart me alone” are pointedly extra gnarled and crushing than something they’ve launched to this point. Right here, Jail Faith sound primarily in letting out all of the negativity they’ve been holding in, with out worrying about something like a memorable melody. One thing this horrifying is tough to overlook anyway.
