Following 2024’s acclaimed debut Hex Dealer, a newly challenging but also exciting experimental fusion of post-punk, noise rock, electronica and hip-hop by the New York band in this second LP, inspired by the anxiously oddball situation of frontman Bret Kaser’s identity being stolen by a real-life fan, and making hundreds of purchases in his name, including the band’s catalogue. The fan, apparently head filled with mythology and conspiracy theories, when tracked down and questioned, claimed that Lip Critic had been hiding coded messages in their music as part of an elaborate scavenger hunt to be fulfilled. And so on the scything sounds of opener Two Lucks, Kaser exclaims with his mix of machine-gun hip-hop and demonic, death-metal screams: “You are the hell that I made for myself.” Packed with dense, tense lyrics, Lip Critic’s sound is white-knuckle wild, an ungodly but rather brilliant lovechild of Beastie Boys, Company Flow, Slipknot, Death Grips, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Melt-Banana, and Soul Coughing with pacy, distorted synth lines and breathless, polyrhythmic percussion. Mid-album, this is particularly compelling with the explosive Talon, the fidgety Charity Dinner, the pacy, polyrhythmic percussion and quirky electronica of Drumming With Izzy, and the fizzing, otherworldly sounds of My Blush (Strength of the Critic). It’s a sweaty, thrilling, visceral, dizzying release, expressing panicked, amphetamine-filled, overstimulated state, such as on the obsessive gambling of Jackpot: “I burn the fear a pleasure curves / I spin the wheel with a dying urge / Still crave the feeling / So sick of myself / I had to cut it off / I got a life full of debt for when I’m gone” and in a gore-filled image, the inner guts of man and gambling machine become one: “They wanna see me pay back / For what I surely did do / They autopsy my suitcase / And find a field of blue / And so they blow the doors up /And pull the zippers out / Hidden underneath my skin /Coin pouch and her allowance /I see 50 on me 80 on me 90 cents a pop /Pulling all the metal out me.” This is an extraordinary expression of the unhinged and desperate becoming increasingly vulnerable, as shown on Legs In The Snare with a stream of consciousness: “And does it really matter when / Things come unglued /Something falls apart /Holding on to you /It’s the reason my /Vision tunnels out /Two weeks passing by /Bodies in the house /Taking down the pictures /And packing up the clothes I’m at the bottom of the barrel.” Chaotic, cutting-edge, challenging and creative work that becomes ever more compelling on each listen, and forms a different, but parallel in innovation, breakthrough release by Manchester’s Maruja. Out on Partisan Records.
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