I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer.

by 
AlbumMay 11 / 201810 songs, 49m 39s
Death Industrial Drone Metal
Popular

With each release, the duo of Lee Buford and Chip King continue to defy the constraints of what it means to be a “heavy” band, seamlessly combining composition or production approaches from hip hop, pop, classical, as well as rock and electronica resulting in a rich and utterly singular sound. Equally at home on festival stages, art spaces, or in DIY basements, they transcend musical boundaries. Their ambitious creativity shapes their bleak worldview into propulsive, affecting, and even danceable music often drenched in distortion. On I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer The Body challenged themselves again by turning their compositional approach on its head, choosing to build the record on their own samples rather than recording the basic tracks of drums and guitars and processing those. The results carry the listener towards the brink of emotional and musical extremes. I Have Fought Against It… conjures the sublime from an unexpected and incomparable variety of sounds. The Body are known for their intense, abrasive live shows, whose waves of dissonance create an abiding dread or an overwhelming sense of terror. They create a volume of sound almost unfathomable from a duo and are unaffected by instrument choice: guitar and drums, or keyboard and synthesizers. Inventive producers, the duo expand their recorded sound palate with regular contributions from the likes of Chrissy Wolpert (Assembly of Light Choir), and Ben Eberle (Sandworm), arranged with help of longtime engineers Seth Manchester and Keith Souza (Machines With Magnets). Wolpert’s ethereal calls and Eberle’s vicious growl are augmented by Lingua Ignota’s Kristin Hayter, whose impassioned voice features on the viscerally emotional “Nothing Stirs.” On “Sickly Heart Of Sand,” vocal tradeoffs between King and Hayter’s are punctuated with the howls of Uniform’s Michael Berdan. With The Body’s keen sense of balance, the ferociousness of these extreme performances are underpinned by the elegance of string swells and pensive, even melodies from a lone piano. For The Body, any source of inspiration is fair game to achieve their distinct atmosphere of unbearable dread, pain, and sadness. “Partly Alive” places rolling drum figures, commonly found in pop, and transforms them with a backdrop of horns, skittering synthetic hi hats, and pitched feedback. The oppressive groove of “An Urn” pulls beat arrangement and melodic ideas from disparate electronic influences. Their eclectic sampling choices are both musical and literary from singjay star Eek-A-Mouse to a reading of Bohumil Hrabal to the Clarice Lispector quote on the album’s artwork and beyond. The album title, an excerpt of Virginia Woolf’s suicide letter, is an apt moniker for the pervasive themes of loss, desperation and loneliness throughout. Carefully selected samples and literary references bolster the album’s emotional heft. I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer proves how truly adventurous and diverse a creative force The Body has become. The Body continue to push the boundaries and definition of what is heavy music, their ingenuity unparalleled.

7.8 / 10

Constructed largely out of cut-up and processed samples of their previous recordings, the noise-metal iconoclasts’ latest album takes the listener on journey through a hell of the Body’s careful making.

B

Arctic Monkeys’ sixth album feels unmoored, while Tee Grizzley’s Activated sounds like the work of a budding superstar, and La Luz explores the textures of its tiki-bar sound on Floating Features. These, plus The Body and Mark Kozelek in this week’s notable new releases.

7 / 10

A flawed but admirable record from a duo who continue to push the boundaries of heavy music.

One of heavy music's most interesting bands delivers heavy music that's difficult to pin down.

The Body have always resisted being categorized as a metal group, incorporating a vast array of influences ranging from opera and classical to contemporary pop and hip-hop while remaining as doom-filled as possible.

8 / 10

The Body's I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer, is a theatrical exploration of pain, depression, and darkness. Its atmospheric approach is that of cinematic quality, using song technicality and emotion that encompasses multiple genres. It is also a sublime experience that will ask of yo

7 / 10

For the follow-up to 2016's 'No One Deserves Happiness', Portland's Lee Buford and Chip King deliver an album that's imaginative, self-referential and has a really long title.

7.5 / 10

The Body push the limits of metal, and even go all out in our review of 'I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer'

70 %

Think Dead Can Dance on PCP.