Illusory Walls

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  The Music Slut Committee

  Steve

  "The first half of this album is so dark and angry and when I first heard it in 2021 it felt refreshing to finally have modern music feel like it was calling out what I was seeing, which feels like a big hole that's missing in popular music. Everything that I want to scream about living under capitalism and growing up in a religious household gets hit here. Died in the Prison of the Holy Office reflects David Bello's background growing up Catholic and the crescendo breakdown at the end after Away with God makes me want to punch through a brick wall every time. It's the only true catharsis I've ever felt as an ex Catholic myself. His voice isn't my favorite (but y'all should know by now how high my tolerance is lol), but the straight poetry in Interludes like Blank//Worker work for me. Ohio river, stomachache/Pray DuPont, our water is safe/If we don't die out here on the grass/We might one day be middle-class just sets you up for depression and then you end the song with May the lower class remember this/And every rich man get what's his and it trails off into that spiraling guitar, carrying your depression and hope with you into the back half of the album.

  Then you get to Fewer Afraid and you're so sick of capitalism and death and overbearing oppression and the song lets you thaw, taking its time to build before hitting their conceit which they've used before in other albums: The world is a beautiful place, but we have to make it that way/Whenever you find home, we'll make it more than just a shelter/If everyone belongs there, it will hold us all together/If you're afraid to die, then so am I. The first time I truly listened to this we were driving around the Italian country side on our first vacation post-Covid and I knew I was going to marry my wife and my crippling anxiety paled in comparison to the world I got to experience and I broke down crying in the car, and still do when I'm locked into listening to the album." - Steve