It might not hit Dumb Flesh’s dancefloor highs but with decent headphones and a windswept night there’s points on here that are damn near-transcendental, although the damage left might be permanent.
On World Eater, the coexistence of melody and belligerence, of fragility under an invincible veneer, speak to the constructive and destructive capabilities of man. Power is completely honest about which instinct is winning right now.
World Eater is ferocious and intense, but it's also thrilling and bristling with life – and it’s these contrasts that make it such a blast to listen to.
On the whole, World Eater is accessible and well-executed.
World Eater is an exercise in building something expansive, lyrical and emotional from a deliberately limited palette. It’s a testament to realising that less can be more, that pointed restraint can open up fertile creative avenues.
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.
It may be Power’s most fatalistic declaration, but also his most engagingly diverse, and his marked exasperations do reflect a not-so-distant dystopia that suitably aligns with today’s societal disconnect.
Considering his legacy, it's all the more impressive that Power found even more challenging places to go with his music, but World Eater's focused chaos is some of his finest work yet.
World Eater thrives on the tension between anxiety and peace, nihilism and love. That’s tough stuff to reconcile, but Power attempts it in muscular yet heartfelt fashion. This is an album that will shake you senseless, eat you up and spit you out. And it’s worth very minute.
It does a solid job of scaring the living daylights out of us, retaining some of the dramatic ambient drones from Blanck Mass’s self-titled solo debut and the intricate programming from the EPs, but burying them in the walls of noise pursued in 2015’s Dumb Flesh.
World Eater isn’t aspirational, it’s nasty. it’s the sort of music you pause when someone knocks on the door. it’s the sort of music you listen to when you need to wallow in your anger, not assuage it; when you want to feel righteous and charged up and weird.
Blanck Mass makes a grand, industrial-flavored return with World Eater.
World Eater is a brutal record, but there’s humanity in it, because Power is drawn to melodies: even at its most pummelling it offers sweet spots and moments of instant gratification. Even without those, its unrelenting nature gives it a hypnotic power.
Despite its impressive moments, World Eater seems like an experiment that left the studio too early, marking a crossroads for an artist who has mastered one field and can’t decide whether to keep digging where he stands, or to go out looking for new territory.
Wreathed in loops and samples, swaddled in stacked vocal sounds, World Eater is former Fuck Button John Power’s response to the turbulence of 2016, and what he regards as “the inner beast inside human beings”. Unsurprisingly, it’s not a pretty sound, though there are moments of transcendent grace.
Actually a chihuahua...
Two years after "Dumb Flesh", Benjamin John Power released "World Eater", more active with his solo project than with his main band, Fuck Buttons. Traveling from post-hardcore industrial to a disenchanted glitchy electronic retrenchment, Benjamin John Power's solo project, Blanck Mass, fascinates me. "World Eater" is a sort of paradox. It's cold, aggressive, and mechanical. But at the same time, it's very human and beautiful. The entire ... read more
Personally, I think Blanck Mass' World Eater is a massively enjoyable experience to listen to, in fact it's been a while since I last enjoyed an electronic album this much. For some reason i've just been incredibly enamoured with this record since it came out and I haven't put it down at all. I've come to the conclusion that in my opinion, Benjamin uses repetition, clever pacing and hypnotic sampling to create an experience that is truly mesmerising. I just kinda get lost and immersed in this ... read more
I am not sure what to think of it. It somehow feels very clean and at the same time monotonous, dissonant a possibly and bit overproduced, in a way that reminds me the feeling of a panic attack or night terror. In a way it feels well made, but at the same time there is something repulsive about it.
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2 | Rhesus Negative 9:10 | 85 |
3 | Please 7:30 | 75 |
4 | The Rat 6:11 | 68 |
5 | Silent Treatment 7:37 | 69 |
6 | Minnesota / Eas Fors / Naked 7:30 | 69 |
7 | Hive Mind 8:32 | 75 |
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