Violent, cold and visceral, Moodring’s second album death fetish is a brilliant excision of the pain of grieving a life limited by illness.
What do you do when your passion is hurting you? In Hunter Young’s mind, the answer is to do it anyway, because it’s his oxygen. In 2022, he was diagnosed with a rare neuro-immune condition that’s completely curtailed his ability to tour either with Moodring or other outfit PSYCHO-FRAME, and with his condition worsened by exertion, making music wasn’t advisable either. Despite the pain and fatigue it causes him, music is how he survives.
It’s also where he grieves. On Moodring’s second album, that agony is most pronounced against the churning, roiling tones of Half-Life, whose skyscraping chorus offers no pill to sweeten the grim reality he faces. ‘I’m only half-alive now,’ he laments, ’I’m swallowing my fate, what’s left to change?’ Still, this pain doesn’t define him. Between images of needles, pain and medicine, there’s more to this album than a portrait of debilitating illness. It’s a visceral vision of the extremities the mind can go to when the body is failing.
Often, death fetish is incredibly violent, but thrillingly so. The propulsive thrum of Cannibal has a magnetic lure, as dark as it gets – ‘How violent do I need to get? / I want to make the conscience leave the back of my head’ – while Bleed Enough drips with bloodlust. ‘Drag it slow across the throat / Spill it out, I need it now,’ he orders over a pulsing industrial rhythm. Gunplay (Suicidal 3way), as its title suggests, entangles lust and violence in a vivid fantasy of Russian roulette with a difference, burning with danger with every strike of the guitar’s strings.
Amid its heavier, steelier sound, the dreamier tones of 2022 debut Stargazer have been all but washed away. The only remaining residues of it are found in Ketamine, channeled into the cold, hazy atmosphere evoking the feeling of floating in a vacuum as Hunter longs to drift away from his reality. ‘Sometimes I want to let the credits roll,’ he sings through a vocoder. Clearly, he knows when to step back and leave his exposed heart on the table, as it’s impossible not to feel affected by not just its vulnerability, but the feeling of fragility it captures.
These songs may have been born from immense difficulty, but within them, Hunter has mined brilliance. In all its shades, it’s a stunning, powerful body of work from a band who, after this, might be considered underrated no longer.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Nine Inch Nails, Loathe, Korn
death fetish is released on March 27 via Sharptone.
