Album Review: Thotcrime - Connection Anxiety
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
I haven’t been this averse to a musical experience since my dad beat me with a violin. I chose to review this because the promo list said it was “cybergrind”. I thought “cool, I like Agoraphobic Nosebleed, what could go wrong”. Only later, after being assaulted by a collection of wall-e distress signals and tawdry breakdown riffs thrown together with the smoothness and grace of Michael j Fox fucking a plug socket, did the magnitude of my miscalculations become apparent. It’s what my mind sounded like when I swapped my ADHD meds for crystal meth. It’s WKD if the “D” meant “deathcore”. It is, in the most charitable terms I can muster in my depleted state, fucking abominable.
Is that too harsh? Almost certainly. I can readily imagine an audience for this, and whilst I might have to beat my gag reflex back into place, “Connection Anxiety” boasts elements that I know could hook an audience that I am absolutely not part of. But it’s conglomeration of glistening hyperpop melody and contemporary metalcore stylings, all syncopated chugs and discordant off-beat guitar squawks over stankface inducing groove drum work could speak to a tonne of people in the modern metal scene. It’s catchy as shit for one thing. “Behind the Cracks” comes out swinging with an epidemically infectious chorus and almost power metal levels of upbeat , major key melodies. Stack it alongside a shuddering breakdown catalogue like “This podcast could’ve lasted four seasons” which slips slickly into an uproarious flurry of black metal fury, or the morose urgency of “My final escape” and given a chance I can imagine plenty of people loving this.
But I’m not one of those people. Why is that? I think it comes down to two or three things: the aspects of this release that do notionally fall within my musical interests – I.e the metal bits – are largely of a type that I’m not particularly wild about, many of the electronic sections grate intolerably on me, and songs often feel like directionless messes of clashing influences junked incoherently together. Take “Existent” for example; kicking off with the fuzzy, 8-bit EDM equivalent of how it feels to run out of toilet paper mid-shit, melding into a monotone rap section, slapped together with a deep-cut Linkin park chorus with the sanctuary theme from Metroid Prime 2 slathered atop it, before we wrap up with a “Future breed machine” drum n’ bass remix, all in two minutes, somehow underdeveloped and overstuffed.
Or try “We Hope Some Good May Come of This”, which stays mostly passable with chonky groove death riffage, thick and nourishing, only to devolve into a noxious offbeat techno outro. If the borg wrote a polka it might sound like this shit. Or take the obnoxiously squeaky intro to “Garden Court”, overlaid awkward with rattling trap beat hi-hats and bass. There are so, so many moments where the momentum of the release as a whole is curb checked by shoehorning in elements and sounds that seem calibrated specifically to annoy me. I can’t help it, the bulk of the electronic influence here is so precisely, so meticulously crafted so as to get on my last fucking nerve with it’s garish, blaring, squeaky malignity that I cannot help but take it personally.
There is one thing that I unreservedly adore however, and that’s the stance the album takes on neuro-divergency. Plenty of bands use their music as a vehicle for catharsis, but even so, there’s a strength In showing vulnerability, and I think that there’s a lot for people who suffer with, say social anxiety or autism, that could connect with “Connection Anxiety “. Songs like “Wrong Way” delve into this in a tender yet triumphal way, so I can at least give high praise for what Thotcrime say, even if I unfortunately couldn’t say the same for how they say it.
I don’t mean to be negative but I’d rather choose which of my kids to rescue from a house fire than listen to this again. Does that make this bad? Not necessarily, between it’s quirky infectiousness and sheer exuberance it could hold a place in any number of hearts, mine emphatically excluded. I’ve praise a-plenty to heap on the themes it juggles, and it’s played with an undeniable passion that cannot be gainsaid, but in the end...this is not for me. So much so that I feel ill equipped to even assess it, the sum total of my experience with EDM is drunkenly spasming my way across a sticky dance floor when “Sandstorm” comes on, I couldn’t tell you the first thing about it beyond that, besides how little I enjoyed it’s presence here. Maybe give it a shot. It’s short, and besides, maybe it’s eclectic zaniness might do something for you.
