- World Eater is a product, says Ben Power, AKA Blanck Mass, of the past year. His third album is a response to a period "teeming with violence, confusion and frustration," realised through the noisy industrial dance for which he's known. "The title," he says, "is a reference to the inner beast inside human beings that, when grouped en masse, stops us from moving forward towards good." The music on the Fuck Buttons member's latest album is as volatile as all that suggests.
Power expresses these ideas in sharp contrasts, where moments of beauty and calm clash with sounds that summon fear and alienation. Within the widescreen melodies and cut up vocals of "Rhesus Negative," shrieking black metal vocals are discernible. An epic choir sample loops around "Silent Treatment"'s marching beat, which then bursts into prickly melody. The dissonance in "Minnesota / Eas Fors / Naked" becomes the sound of chimes and running water. A gauzy soft rock radio transmission emerges.
World Eater is Power's most eclectic record to date. Dumb Flesh, his second album as Blanck Mass, moved away from the wall of sound of his self-titled debut. The album further distances him from the noise and drone roots of Fuck Buttons, favouring grid-like rhythmic structures evident in tracks like "Hive Mind" and "The Rat." If Dumb Flesh was a dance record about the fragility of the body, then World Eater is, perhaps, about the fragility of people. Power's frustration is clear.
Tracklist01. John Doe's Carnival Of Error
02. Rhesus Negative
03. Please
04. The Rat
05. Silent Treatment
06. Minnesota / Eas Fors / Naked
07. Hive Mind