Razors Through Flesh: “Take Drugs, Kill Your Boyfriend!” – irrepressibly epic
Razors Through Flesh is the solo project of Massachusetts born and Providence, RI based, DJ Mephistophalish. Her sound is a fusion of drum and bass, dubstep, and industrial with a touch of future bass thrown in for good measure. The project has just released its latest 10 track album, entitled “Take Drugs, Kill Your Boyfriend!” The album works so well because it believes its own sense of importance – whether that be its obedience to its own formula, or the grandiosity of its tracks. With its rave synths and implacable builds to the inevitable drops, this plays out like a Friday movie, and it wastes no time in pressing all the right buttons.
Throughout it all, it’s Razors Through Flesh’s command of space that impresses most. Even played on cheap headphones, the DJ Mephistophalish sonic template has the ability to feel irrepressibly epic – that masque of invincibility that keeps it propelling forward with intensity regardless of the tempo.
Offering both atmospherics and a sledgehammer approach. This creation stands very much as a calling card for the state of modern electronic music – one constantly in defiance to notions of radio-readiness. But then again, maybe that’s the best thing about this record.
When artists write music pretty much exclusively to be played on radio it can be an awkward task for them to make a solid piece of work that can carry its weight outside of that setting. Razors Through Flesh may not be an artist you would recognize instantly by name or song name but a couple of her tunes played down your lugholes would probably captivate your attention, as the album doesn’t pull any punches.
Album opener “The Song at the Center of the World” starts fairly subtly but quickly picks up the pace and builds momentum to burst into a downright epic stomper that fans will lap up in moments.
The explosive nature of the album is rather relentless with a decent portion of it really pushing the boat out with 4-to-the-floor tracks that will go down a treat with a few shots and a decent laser show. I was not expecting to really enjoy most of the songs on this particular album.
I was wrong. “Take Drugs, Kill Your Boyfriend!” encapsulates just about everything that makes Razors Through Flesh so attractive to me in general: experimentation, diversity, range, and soul. And all these elements come together on the track “Live With That”. This song definitely puts your mind in another place if you close your eyes.
The tracks on this album keep will keep your heart pumping as they employ dynamic sound combinations that are nothing short of mind-blowing, from an artistic standpoint. Especially the cuts that sit in the middle of the album – “The Beast”, “Haunted” and “Xenobiology Detected” which tend towards the crunchier industrial sounds. This section of the album is polished, aggressive, eclectic, and shows just how talented DJ Mephistophalish really is.
“Misery” is an awesome rap influenced track with a bigger than life beat layered with industrial style rhythms, while “Resonate” uses a drum and bass backdrop for its rap verses. Very welcome ideas which makes Razors Through Flesh much more accessible and entertaining.
Grab a hold of this album because every song is first rate. A rare collection of drum and bass where each song stands on its own but works brilliantly as a whole musical package as well.
OFFICIAL LINKS: SOUNDCLOUD
