Animated Violence Mild - Blanck Mass: Review
is the solo project of Benjamin John Power who spent the first years of his career as one half of experimental electronic music duo Fuck Buttons before taking their fusion of industrial rock and electronic pop into Blanck Mass.
Review By Lavender:
I have always been a huge fan of Fuck Buttons and I am not silent about that, despite the fact that some heretics in the indie community have tried to retroactively insist that the duo's three records weren't as groundbreaking and excellent as we all knew they we're when they dropped. Street Horrsing, Tarot Sport and even Slow Focus are records I still keep in my rotation which is why I was so excited for Blanck Mass. As a solo act I have still been impressed with Blanck Mass but not quite on the same level as Fuck Buttons, and on their last record World Eater I was enamored with the sheer heaviness of the distorted guitars, but some of the shorter compositions managed to never really feel fulfilling. After hearing the three singles leading up to this record I was very impressed and expecting big things, while Animated Violence Mild isn't perfect I think it's the best Blanck Mass record to date and it keeps my expectations high that Ben can reach the quality standard of an album like Tarot Sport.
The album opens up on an incredible moment with a short intro cut that helps transition from the silence into the blistering landscape of Death Drop. The track pairs some sharp and constantly evolving key blips in its foreground with huge walls of building industrial sound. There is a triumphant and soaring crescendo that features some gorgeous keys crashing into the front of the mix. The song also introduces some screamed black metal style vocals that take a backseat in the mix but provides a great progression for the track. The song gets brighter and punchier in its second half as some of the noise fades out, the space gets filled with some anthemic and booming drums as the tail end of the track glides out brilliantly with some of the harshest noise reintroducing into the mix.
House vs. House works in some chugging guitar riffs and features one of my favorite moments on the entire record with an explosive synthesizer led swell that rexontextualizes the songs driving instrumental. The middle of the song does introduce some airy vocals I'm not really crazy about that sound like a whacked out version of something Hot Chip would do and I don't think they add much to the progression, but when the song reintroduces its initial instrumental it really takes off again. Hush Money is a really interesting song that is super fast paced and features some blaring synths right in the front of the mix and works some driving percussion in to keep it in time. The song is super saturated with electonic effects that it reminds me of an Iglooghost track and serves as a transitional piece between singles that I enjoy in the context of the record.
Love Is A Parasite is wild from the moment it kicks off with walls of distorted fuzz and a driving hypnotic refrain builds upon itself each time it re-emerges. Some very natural keys slide into the song and are one of the least synthetic sounding pieces of instrumentation here. The song is surprisingly catchy once it drops some more screamed vocals in the second half that mix in perfectly and the outro is a heavy and throttling moment. Creature/West Fuqua is a shorter almost interlude style cut that drowns out all of the harsh noises till the record is at its quietest point and replaces the sounds with some angelic harps and soft vocal melodies.
This makes for a shocking moment when the final single No Dice kicks off with an absolutely manic stop and start percussion kick as well as some weighty chanting vocals. The instrumental is filled out with some distant keys and stuttering layers of percussion that gives the song a very different stylistic approach from most of the other songs here. It revolves around a beat much more than any of the other songs here and as some rhythmic clapping makes it into the mix the song resolves itself as a strange but effective experiment. Wings Of Hate is a change of pace right at the end when it hits with some crazy and zany guitars right off the top of the tune. The walls of distorted sound come back here alongside some wild drums in the background that proves somebody is really giving it their all on percussion. The song rises into a massive wall of keys in its second half with all the rapid fire instrumentation wrapped strangely around each other for a result that is dizzying in its pace and makes for an absolutely crazy ending to a roller coaster of a record.
Animated Violence Mild is a record that proves to be more than the sum of its parts. While the songs have a ton of variance in style and execution the listening experience as a whole is a wild ride that dives through constantly evolving and absolutely restless series of musical passages.Even though not every moment is perfect when assembled together the nearly 50 minutes of the record are consistently so fresh and captivating that it reminds me of hearing new Fuck Buttons music when it would drop earlier this decade, and I think Blanck Mass have snuck in a very solid record right at the buzzer of the decade that is both a breathe of fresh air and a captivating update to Benjamin John Power's sound that makes it very easy to look forward to what great things he will do next. 8.5/10
