this album has been simmering for a while. though i've been listening to it nonstop since the night it released. it was a special night.

there's something so innately beautiful about an album like this, seeing their progression fall in upon itself over and over again. after what has remained the best, most soul-shredding album of the decade so far in Frailty, and the artistic re-evolution with the heart-rending Census Designated, they—through expansive lens focused in on their own work, their own self-image and outside perceptions, their own artistic trajectory—create one of the most explosively creative and eclectic albums ever, through crafting, in a self-assuredness of that fact, something that can't help but still doubt everything it was founded upon.

and as much as they sound incredibly different, there are parallels to BRAT released last year (thank you for the reference Danny), of crafting something so, so catchy—that still, in its darkest moments, pulls downwards into depths of grief or desperation that cannot be summed up better than what has already been articulated on wax.

there are three show-stopping sets of three on this album, with TWICE REMOVED, angels in camo, and Fadeoutz splitting them up neatly; their places are still decisive though, in descending order, the overall consistency here still staggering to witness. and while JRJRJR is the closing moment here, it seems more valuably seen as an epilogue, with Dark night castle as the 'true' ending to this album's moment. there is a lyrical mania in the former that keeps it almost innately tied across as its own artistic statement, eclipsing the previous eleven tracks with something so wrapped up in terribly expansive fears, doubts, and a sense of division from everything known, true or not... even if their erratic confidence appears to be at an all-time high.

the foundations that influence those eleven prior steps here are reminiscent of vital figures that they've shown appreciation for or collaborated with in the past: Lucy Bedroque and d0llywood1 of course, given the tour they headlined, but there are broader marks of house, edm, hardstyle, industrial, hip-hop, and hardcore screams that lace every little inch of the album that make it so imposing. yet Dark night castle is itself an outlier too, singularly pulling closer to the artistic tact of Chuquimamani-Condori in stretching, distorting, re-imagining, and re-forming vocal lines and melody snippets into something noisily, impenetrably grandiose. 2024's b-side How to Teleport hinted at this reverence; here they ring out and meld with the rest of the daggers around them into something somehow much greater than the sum of their parts.

yet the most impactful inspiration here is of themselves. through self-reference upon self-reference, in sound and in messaging, they violently rebuild in Revengeseekerz the subject matters that made JRJRJR the most plainly, strenuously corrosive single of this year. they seem to continuously, repetitively narrow focus upon each little spare line that made that song such an obelisk in their catalog, in the hopes of making it known exactly what this album is for: a victory lap of artistic freedom and unbridled talent, blanket-covering nagging sensations that still creep past despite it all, ad nauseam.

Psychoboost as further deconstructed progression of their loudest work under Jane and Danny Brown's vocal onslaught; Star people as the personal affect to JRJRJR's antisociality; Experimental Skin as simultaneous revering of another and self-destructively re-inventing or forgetting yourself like Video's allegory; Dreamflasher as recreation of the kinds of longing-through-suffocating-fame that Flash in the Pan and Magic I Want U sparked; TURN UP OR DIE as third artistic eulogy for leroy despite intermittent vandalism (XO TOUR LLIF3 most recently), and its overbearing ecstatic backdrop as a form of super-effective escapism; Dancing with your eyes closed as a marker for how much more effectively they can build upon their early digicore work without ever treading old ground; and Professional Vengeance as an industrial sabotaging of the pop perfection that they can sculpt without fear.

their ability to crate-dig their own work instrumentally is what makes all of those statements work 10x more gratifyingly, and paints their statements in even more aesthetically charming a light. Revengeseekerz is a set of self-anecdotes that, despite all the longing for and from others scattered about, shows a careful reverence for your past selves, an uncertain reality and confident painting in your version of now, and a desperate hope that when it all changes, when it all crashes together to rise out again as something new, that there is some kind of touching sensibility left. something that can make the ground you kiss much more stable. whether that means putting down the mic just to reach that paradisal anchor someday, or riding it out until they meet you at sunset some unknown day, it longs that whatever, whoever it may be, will be transformative, outshining anything you could possibly dream of.