If you're not into THIS kind of music, then you probably aren't going to have your mind changed after listening to Person(a), no matter how much the album title is insisting that you give it a chance. Who it is made by feels different to me, sure, based on my limited scope of knowledge re: hardcore. But what it is feels no different than any random Bandcamp band with these genre tags that might randomly pop up on the desktop. Literally the only thing that will make this album truly stand out from any of my past and future hardcore experiences is that Free Your Mind! is now being viewed through the lens of Record Club, which doesn't amount to much besides a bigger magnifying glass, I guess. The bottom line, here at the beginning: this is pretty okay.
It's all about choices, though. You can choose to dismiss it, and I wouldn't blame you. I dismiss music like this every day. I dismiss it because it's difficult to connect with intense pain like this too often, and so I take the easy way out and ignore it. I think if I were to risk being the oldest person in the room by about twelve years and attended a hardcore show in some secret warehouse, I might look around and wonder about the people who are in the room with me, pushing each other to the sound of songs like "It's a Death Cult." I might wonder what's going in their lives that this amount of pain and misery and hatred (directed inward and outward) is okay.
If I really dug deep, I know I could allow myself to be right there in the pit with them. The world is a disgusting place, and the pain is easy to feel if you let yourself feel it. The titanic and often unintelligible howl of frontwoman Rebecca makes it clear that she's feeling it. The screaming might be what turns you off, but you cannot deny its purpose. The lyrics hurt, and there is only one way to convey them. And there are plenty of lyrics on Free Your Mind! that I can without a doubt mark as true, but it's tough, man. Here's one of the better ones:
"Always waiting for apocalypse that's always almost here / but what does doomsday mean in a genocidal culture / where billions have suffered to bring you all you hold dear?"
This is all true, but marking it true means acknowledging there's a problem, and it means acknowledging that I am part of that problem, and it means that by ignoring the problem, I exacerbate that problem... but I'm just so worn out all the time. Emotionally, I mean (though physically too, but for completely different and happier reasons). Free Your Mind! amounts to eleven minutes of doomscrolling, if you choose to follow along. Now multiply that by the number of hardcore bands out there putting out their own eleven-minute screeds featuring the same themes of antipathy and bile-spewing anger—which, I dunno, let's say at least 100,000 across the globe?!—and that's a whole lot of psychic baggage to take on while you're tackling a particular genre of music. I am a coward. So it goes.
And add all this on top of the fact that we are, through Person(a), receiving a radio signal from a minority group that historically is at the receiving end of much of the violence perpetuated in America. Republican lawmakers respond to the violence by outlawing medical procedures that provide healing. And that's just physical; think about what it does to someone emotionally when the bulk of national discourse revolves around where you can use the restroom and if you can compete in a fucking swimming race. Thus: the levels of attempted suicide among transgender youth is absurdly high. [Edit: also—the shooting this past week, etc.] When Rebecca yells "IT'S A DARK WORLD / THEY DON'T WANT US IN IT," I believe her. When she concludes the album with "NOTHING TO LOSE BUT A DESOLATE FUTURE / NOT ONE MORE QUEER IN THE GROUND!!!!", it feels like a rallying cry that I support. But I don't necessarily feel like I have the right to rally around it, if that makes sense. It's either I fully invest in the music or I don't invest at all. There is no middle ground. I usually take the easy way out.
That's not to say I live my life like that, just when it comes to music. In every other decision I make throughout my day, I'm thinking of others. When it comes to choosing music, I can think only of myself. I listen to music that I enjoy and can relate to musically and emotionally. I use music as a means to protect myself and I use music as a balm, and I cannot imagine a scenario in which Free Your Mind! is a means to either of those ends. It instead tears down the wall and it rips open wounds. Mad respect for making music that makes you feel something, but if that something is visceral pain, I'm mainly walking in the opposite direction.
I guess that isn't always true. I don't know. I don't really know what the fuck I'm talking about. This is just what I'm feeling right this second as I type this. Catch me on a better day and I'm likely to just say "hey, it's eleven minutes, and one of those minutes is the insane accelerated ending of 'Getting Fucked,' which is powerful no matter where you stand on hardcore music." I would say something like that, and I would mean it. I could also say something like "Free Your Mind! attempts to find catharsis in that pain," and I'd be forced to reckon with the fact that I'm wrong. Those unnamed crowds cheering as a police station burns to the ground? They are finding catharsis in witnessing a symbol of violence and tyranny be destroyed. I can dig that. The world is rotten and sometimes a controlled burning can create anew. These are things I'd say if I were a better critic and a more informed fan.
Sometimes I mindlessly scroll through random lists on RateYourMusic, where most of the heralded music is, like, doom metal and dark ambiance and shit like that. Rarely anything I would actually enjoy. But it's cool to read lists like that if only to feel the vast infinity that is MUSIC. There is so much out there. 99% of it I will never even hear of, let alone hear. 99.99% of it I would probably like a whole lot less than Free Your Mind! if I did ever actually end up listening to it. And yet it's out there, and that fact makes me feel pretty good. Even if I fall, there is no bottom, and so I'll never hit that bottom and splat. That's weirdly comforting, to be aware of this.
I'm still talking out of my ass, I know. I've listened to Free Your Mind! at least three times in a row while writing this bullshit review. It hasn't gotten better, but it hasn't gotten worse either. It's just white noise, to a certain extent. If you zoom in real close on that bonkers album front cover art, you'll see two people dancing around during Person(a)'s set, proclaiming that "Noise is music!" I don't know if I agree, but shit, man, it also makes me feel good that people can connect to this noise and can appreciate it for what it is, even if I can't, to an extent.
I'm trying real hard. I am. I think maybe this isn't the place to start, if I were to really attempt to start the journey in earnest. As with any genre, if I'm trying to "understand" a class of music that I'm not overly familiar with, then I usually have to start with the classics, and then work my way into the present. I don't have an appreciation for hardcore music, and so when Free Your Mind! sounds like "just another hardcore album," that isn't said lovingly. If I was even remotely familiar with some of the tropes of hardcore, then maybe I'd find joy in their presence here. But to me, again: noise.
Look, it's Thanksgiving weekend. I've already typed enough. I am not too hungover from turkey to realize when enough is enough, when I've gone too long. A better man than I would've first gathered his thoughts, and then presented them in an orderly fashion. A man who is at the tail end of a semester in which he's gotten very little sleep due to familial demands is not a man ready to be orderly in a record review. He is instead a man who hears screaming and in response tries to find any sense of quiet he possibly can, and he does that by typing out his thoughts, as they come to him, about a very loud and noisy album.
I am that man, and I am tired. I think Person(a) is great and I wish them all well, but I think this is probably enough for now. Though I guess we'll see if I have to eat my words next week when we swing wildly in the other musical direction and have to finally tackle T. Swift within the confines of Record Club. Might be wishing I still had some of that screaming left within me.
NOW DOOMSDAY'S AT YOUR DOOR
TIME SLIPPED UP YOUR ASS
GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5
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