Armed with only vocal cords, an MPC, and a drum kit, Wreck and Reference take aim at every person who has ever uttered, “What is this electronic buwwwwshit?” or “KVLT LIFE” or “That’s not metal,” and super soak them straight in the kisser with a deluge of blackened muck. If it seems to you that Felix Skinner and Ignat Frege don’t give a fuck about you and your weak crew, you’re right. But if it seems to you that they give every fuck in the world, bearing their souls on stage in a fury of static-charred evil animus intended to thrill and challenge, you’re right. Like fellow doom aesthetes The Body, Wreck and Reference redefine the limits of symbiotic duo performance by way of emotive roars and disciplined percussion — exuding misanthropy in album art and lyrical content while sculpting sample-based atmospheres sophisticated enough to invite us in for closer investigation. The emotions Wreck and Reference release on record tilt the mirror toward our own buried darknesses and illustrate the fascination, even joy, of letting them loose. We witness relief in catharsis. We experience instant reconfiguration. We lift our own limbs and consume them for sustenance.
“Corpse Museum,” our first taste of the duo’s upcoming Want LP, bears the “pop” tag on SoundCloud for a reason. Though comprised of obscured maybe-synth?/maybe-guitar?/maybe-vocal-pad? samples and surges of low-end, Skinner’s disembodied harmonic elements sketch out something like a legible progression, rhythmically anchored to Frege’s martial cymbal beatdowns and acrobatic tom fills. Like fellow Flenserites including Have A Nice Life or Planning For Burial, Wreck and Reference aren’t afraid to contextualize their hellish tones in “conventional” song structures, harnessing the medium’s expected recursions and refrains to loop back around and batter the listener again in another round — this time with more distortion, more ire. For every verse that sinks into abstraction with garbled synth squelches and high-hat missives, a heaving chorus lies in wait, ready to lift our fists and voices in grim triumph for another: “NEVER ENDING / ALWAYS ENDING.”
Want lands on June 10 via The Flenser. You can preorder it now. Wreck and Reference tour with Deafheaven and Pallbearer (!!) this june.
• Wreck and Reference: http://wreckandreference.bandcamp.com
• The Flenser: http://theflenser.com