Foreign Body are horrible. They’re not there to try and make you feel welcome. They are the unpleasant stain on the carpet of your local pub…yet, this is exactly why Foreign Body are so bloody wonderful!
The Brooklyn quartet’s second album is a filthy collision of noise rock, punk and hardcore that is consistently delivered with all the subtlety of a firm poke in the eye. They don’t care about polish, the guitars grind away incessantly, basslines throb like a sore thumb, drums pound with ugly persistence and Hugh Potter’s vocals burrow into your psyche like maggots on roadkill.
Libertine is a record that prides itself on its ugliness. This isn’t just mindless aggression, it’s laser-focused and targeted directly at societies darkest depravaties. Across ten tracks, Foreign Body explore the shadowy, sticky corners that make up the very basest of humanity’s vices, the places that polite society generally tries to keep behind a locked door. The band have described the record as moving through different predatory perspectives, meaning the listener is repeatedly forced to inhabit the head of someone…well…rather unpleasant. So, all in all, not one to play to your dear old grandmother…
Kicking off with Strung Out, Foreign Body instantly prove that they know how to make a listener feel uncomfortable, snarling, predatory lyrics twisted up with unhinged saxophone lines…this sounds like New York through the eyes of Jack The Ripper! Passed Around is even harder to stomach, successfully igniting a sickening shame of being part of the human race, while Hind Legs provides one of the album’s standout grooves that really gives Potter’s vocals enough room to unfold.
However, beneath all the grime and noise, there is also genuine strength to the songwriting here. When Sex Is Not Enough threatens to collapse into complete chaos, but the band understand exactly how long to let a riff fester before squeezing something more violent out of it. Man Was Meant To Take Advantage similarly locks into a filthy, repetitive groove and simply refuses to let go.
Foreign Body clearly understand the power of repetition and it’s an approach that is used to great effect here. It’s hardly subtle, but it drives the point home like a hammer blow to the back of the head, which is exactly what they are trying to do. The grimy riffs are supposed to get stuck in your head, the pounding drums are meant to hypnotise you, the distorted vocals are supposed to feel like they’re coming from deep inside the recesses of your soul…if Dahmer, Gacy and Bundy got together in a recording studio then this wouldn’t be far from the result.
Beauty Is a Hammer closes things out effectively, but by that point you may feel like you’ve spent half an hour trapped inside a particularly hostile washing machine. And that’s arguably the point. Libertine isn’t trying to be pretty, clever or particularly welcoming. It’s confrontational, upsetting and deeply uncomfortable, but beneath the deliberately repulsive exterior is a band with a surprisingly clear idea of what they want to sound like. This is a record that stays with you long after it stops spinning, whether you want it to or not…
Best Paired with – A flashlight, a missing shoe and a rusty nail.
Reviewed by Bryn.
Foreign Body – Libertine is out now on Brutal Panda.
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