SHOW ME THE BODY

 

"trouble the water"

Year:  2022

Country:  US

City:  New York

Label:  Loma Vista

Format:  CD, LP

Tracks: 12

Time:  30 min.

Genre:  rock, electronic

Style:        Post Hardcore

On an adventurous new album, the New York hardcore band populates a swamp of chugs with weird creatures of electronica and sudden clearings of melodic, galloping punk. I saw Corpus, the label formed around New York hardcore punk band Show Me the Body, participate in the Red Bull Culture Clash in Brooklyn earlier this year. It’s a corporate event modeled on dancehall soundclash culture, where crews of musicians face off on opposing stages. From one corner of the Greenpoint venue Warsaw, one of Corpus’ opponents, the DJ collective Half Moon, proclaimed that they “represent Brooklyn. The real Brooklyn.” Taunts are part of the sportsmanship of a soundclash, but this one struck a nerve—on Corpus’ next turn, one of the label’s crew responded with an emphatic “Suck my dick!” This is an old problem for Corpus, Show Me the Body, and a lot of artists in New York: How weird can they get before they’re no longer “real”? How close to dance music will Show Me the Body be allowed to come before Redditors curl their lips?

On Trouble the Water, Show Me the Body’s third full-length album, their experimentations often strike gold. The band’s daring pays off when vocalist Julian Cashwan Pratt breaks his voice wide open on tracks that dig into sounds that are firsts for the band, and consummate what were previously flirtations with dance music. On “Radiator,” a single chanted refrain of “Don’t it make you wanna go home?” with double-tracked vocals calls up the Ramones. The band pairs the look at punk’s past with one from its future, overlaying the whole track with an incessant synthesizer belch. Whereas on their previous full-length, 2019’s Dog Whistle, they leaned primarily on their proficiency for creating menacing atmosphere, throughout Trouble the Water, the band populates what might otherwise be a swamp of chugs with weird creatures of electronica and sudden clearings of melodic, galloping punk. On “Demeanor” and “Using It,” they switch between hardcore and noise, sometimes fluidly, sometimes abruptly; press materials attribute the glitchy textures to bassist Harlan Steed. “I wanna feel what I’ve never felt before,” Pratt growls over “Demeanor.” Yes!

Trouble the Water is also a showcase for Pratt’s expanding talents as a vocalist and a lyricist. He roars, shrieks, leers: On “Food From Plate,” he breaks suddenly from a credible death-metal bark to a light chuckle. Right after “They think it’s sweet” in his trademark snarl on “War Not Beef” comes “They think it’s e-e-easy” in a mocking falsetto, before the tempo hikes and the track tumbles forward in double time. He is a shapeshifter, becoming a different entity nearly every second. The first half of “WW4” is melancholy, and by the end, the very same lyrics are a martial chant.

The waging of war is a consistent concern on Trouble the Water. “They don’t belong here!” Pratt spits on the chorus of lead single “We Came to Play,” and “I don’t regret violence” on opening track “Loose Talk.” Gentrification and a fierce hostility to the changing New York remain a lyrical focus. I think this disposition reveals why Show Me the Body find it more difficult to shake off sneers like the ones thrown at them at Warsaw, aimed at their authenticity. When you wield the double-edged sword of Not Fucking With Certain Shit, you can get cut: laughed at for cringey interviews or called assholes for swatting phones out of the hands of the audience. Show Me the Body are in the arena, where they choose to be, where they belong. Here, you can’t get by being a guy who everyone likes. You have to be really fucking good (Review by Adlan Jackson ).

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"dog whistle"

Year:  2019

Label:  Loma Vista

Format:  CD, LP

Tracks:  11

Time:  30 min.

Genre:  rock, electronic

Style:        Post Hardcore

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"corpus I"

Year:  2017

Label:  Loma Vista

Format:  digital

Tracks:  17

Time:  30 min.

Genre:  rock, electronic

Style:        Post Hardcore

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"body war"

Year:  2016

Label:  Loma Vista

Format:  CD, LP

Tracks:  10

Time:  30 min.

Genre:  rock, electronic

Style:        Post Hardcore

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ZULU

 

"a new tomorrow"

Year:  2023

Country:  US

City:  Fullerton, CA

Label:  Flatspot

Format:  CD, LP

Tracks:  15

Time:  28 min.

Genre:  rock

Style:        Power Violence

Zulu have no time to waste. In the five-second gap after “Africa,” the reverent orchestral introduction of their debut album A New Tomorrow, but before the forceful drop-tuned power chord buzz of “For Sista Humphrey,” the Los Angeles-based powerviolence quintet raises a quick question: “Ayo, it’s Zulu in this bitch, what y’all niggas on?” The music drives forward, anchored by drummer Christine Cadette and bassist Satchel Brown, who back a chugging riff played by guitarists Braxton Marcellous and Dez Yusuf. Then comes a death metal growl from vocalist Anaiah Lei, and the band’s full-length debut A New Tomorrow takes off on a trajectory that cannot be predicted or contained.

Lei is a multi-instrumentalist who got his start as a teenager alongside brother Mikaiah Lei in the indie rock band the Bots and went to play in California punk bands DARE and Culture Abuse. He founded Zulu in 2018. Two early EPs, 2019’s Our Day Will Come and 2020’s My People… Hold On, solidified the band’s signature style: blastbeats and mosh-worthy grooves injected with samples of classic soul and reggae artists who sing of fortifying Black community. If the EPs were experimental studies, then A New Tomorrow holds nothing back, sounding confident and all-encompassing. The record has a mind and a memory that examines all angles of Black legacy while working to define the future without fear or strife.

In a recent interview with NPR, Lei expressed disinterest in writing lyrics that only address suffering. “When people think about the pain of exclusion, they think about Black people. And then we end up getting tokenized one way or another,” he said. A New Tomorrow confronts prejudice, alienation, and anger on its own terms. “52 Fatal Strikes,” updated from Our Day Will Come, is two-stepping hardcore that speaks of racial injustice: “I’ve done nothing/I just exist/Don’t front/I know you wanna kill me.” The lyrics are forward and fluffless, even on softer tracks like “Crème de Cassis,” a spoken-word critique of a nation that fixates on Black people’s pain without providing space to celebrate their resiliency. “Why must I only share our struggle/When our Blackness is so much more?” asks vocalist Aleisia Miller over piano accompaniment by Precious Tucker. “We’re favored by the sun from the moment we’re created.”

The dynamic force of powerviolence isn’t the loudest part of A New Tomorrow: It’s the way the album juxtaposes the sludge and the shrieks with songs performed in styles popularized by Black people. At times it is poignant and reverent, like the tearful little prayers of the layered voices that ask “Must I only share my pain?” on the mid-album interlude of the same title. Zulu are at their most confrontational in this mode, revealing vulnerability while daring hardcore purists to try to enforce a distinction between Lei’s guttural roar of protest on “Music to Driveby” and the sampled croon of Curtis Mayfield that follows. By refusing to be flattened, Zulu make clear that working within genre lines is far less meaningful than a commitment to the history of Black music, Black love, and Black might (by Lindsay Temple ).

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"our day will come"

Year:  2019

Label:  none

Format:  CD

Tracks:  10

Time:  18 min.

Genre:  rock

Style:        Power Violence

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