Cassette Review // Body Shame "Quiet Pills" (Bento Records)

$7 // https://bodyshame.bandcamp.com/album/quiet-pills // https://bentorecords.bandcamp.com/album/quiet-pills //

This cassette begins with a loud flurry of percussion.   As the electronics come in, so does a lot of distortion.  The sound reminds me a bit of something from the early 2000's between a label like Death Wish- with artists like Some Girls and Sex Positions- or even possibly a jacked up version of The Faint, whom everyone else seemed to love but I could never quite get into.   Within the beats and loops is a sense of glitch as well, which makes this all the more wonderful because it truly exemplifies that feeling of controlled chaos.  

Into the second song now, "In Love With My Face", and there are vocals which just remind me of Drowningman though the overall feel of the music can be described as electro noise thrash.  Through blissed out rock which can remind me of that specific era of Stone Temple Pilots, there are also these laser blasts coming through to give this song the feeling of both shock and beauty.   "Dead Skin" comes in like a more complicated version of a Stabbing Westward song and I love every second of it.

As the electronics cut through and rip, it is instrumental again but there is this heavy feeling of that grinding, that movement, such as a song from "The Fragile" era of Nine Inch Nails.   This then becomes the starts and stops like an engine revving up with some frequency changes behind it.   It all feels very much like it could be at a racetrack but in a simulation.   Everything begins to swirl, making me think about the circus and then it all just comes to a crashing end.

On the flip side we begin with percussion but very quickly turn into a violent electronic sound.  When I listen to pop music or music I just feel could be on the radio I always think of it as being non-abrasive and on this song Body Shame is very much abrasive.  This is that type of sound that if you put it on loud enough people are going to ask you to turn it down and I'm not turning it down.   The combination of distortion and electronics just feels so perfect on "Tired of Wanting" and despite what the Bandcamp list says, songs 7 and 8 are switched on the cassette.

After blasting through "Shut the Fuck Up", "A Bully and a Coward" has some elements like one of those distorted rock bands from the early '00's like The (International) Noise Conspiracy or Tora! Tora! Torrance but there is also just that glitch which brings it all back to Body Shame.  We slow down for some more racetrack sounds on "A Permanent Solution".   Through electronics and heavy percussion, as we reach the end of "Quiet Pills" everything just feels as if it is falling apart and it shouldn't really be any other way.