Rave Review: Eraserhead - Violence
Eraserhead provides a reckoning on Violence, their new album for Love Love Records. The world as we know it is gone; the landscape is menacing and unwelcoming. Grief and hopelessness prevail.
The cinematic sprawl of Violence embraces a post-apocalyptic setting for its plot to unfold, where chaos and collapse feel all too familiar. Yet, the pop-culture references laced throughout bring it squarely into the present—sporadic nods to Tom Riddle, Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” and David Lynch’s death, chaotically summing up the dystopian world we live in.
That same sense of chaos carries into the album’s sound. The wide-ranging and disparate styles traversed across the record run the gamut, showcasing Eraserhead as a curator of today’s club sound—from drum and bass to club-focused electro and maximalist techno. In this, we are guided by a well-versed prophet of club genres, leading us through the desert.
Each track unfolds like a chapter in this post-apocalyptic journey. The raging vocals on “D.A.R.E.” paint a picture of a man raging against the desert, mystically expelling his anger into an inhuman expanse—lips parched, no end in sight. Nadia Rose, one of many excellently chosen contributors, enters the fold as a sharp-tongued soothsayer, an oracle attempting to unite us in our fractured times.
“Blood Waves” begins as a sweet reverie of a time long past, before the bombs crowd the sentiment. Again and again they drop, leveling the earth on a massive scale. Yet even this destruction, this violence, registers as sorrow, surrounded by warm arpeggios and the mystical entrance of horns. There are brief moments of respite, such as on “Ghost Transmission,” where solitude envelops the chaos—but not for long.
Taken together, the album’s vision feels less like pure despair and more like a call to arms. It is escalation. It instills confidence, channeling the swagger of dubstep and grime on “Murakami.” This is an ode to the underground, one that pulls from the pounding genres that rage against the ills of this world. The music calls out like an angry prayer—and God, I hope it works.
(The Lunatic is an Austin, Texas–based raver spreading the good word through his reviews and blog—and by selling the weirdest fucking electronic vinyl around.)
