Black Dog Bite LP cover
Intravenous Magazine’s Sean Palfrey dissects Angelspit’s 2017 album ‘Black Dog Bite’
Review: Angelspit – ‘Black Dog Bite‘
16.10.17 SEAN PALFREY
ANGELSPIT
‘Black Dog Bite’
BLACK PILL RED PILL
After last year’s ambitious outing on ‘Cult Of Fake‘, Angelspit return with ‘Black Dog Bite‘, which sees the band crank it up to 11 with their classic blend of ultra-brutal beats, machine-gun sampled guitars, massive dirty synths and scathing vocals bludgeoning the speaks.
Whereas ‘Cult Of Fake‘ presented a deceptively complex construction dressed in their classic electro-punk style. ‘Black Dog Bite‘ is a vicious and straight-forward assault that doesn’t take any prisoners. Dance-friendly as ever, but cynical and overflowing with punk rock attitude this album is a blistering ride from start to finish.
Songs such as ‘Satanic Aesthetic’, ‘Sexy Tragic Muse’, ‘Hidden Knife’, ‘Dead Man talking’, ‘Post Truth Wonderland’, ‘V Is For Voltage’, and ‘I, Weapon’ provide the album with a back bone of electro-punk madness comprised of crunch glitches, hard dance beats, super-processed vocals, throbbing bass and jagged leads. While the stunning ‘Scorpio Machine’ veers off in different directions making for some truly standout closing track.
It’s dense, pulsing and low-fi 90s sounds are just what initially endeared Angelspit to the cyber audience and this album will definitely appeal to fans of their early work, while not taking any steps backwards. It’s music to smash smartphones to.
Production-wise, with it’s old school and low-fi inclinations it would be easy for this to sound dated. But Zoog’s expert hand keeps the grit, the nastiness, and the bile flowing without compromising on quality. It’s not the cookie-cutter modern dance production. But it is high-quality. Hard but dance-friendly. And says exactly what Zoog wants it to.
This is a strong album. Perhaps Angelspit’s strongest so far. It feels so well rounded. It’s angry and punk at it’s core but while the music is old school and low-fi, even downright experimental in places, it is still fresh, approachable and easy to dance to. ‘Black Dog Bite‘ shows that Angelspit are serious hitter in the electronic music world and are still innovating with the best of them.
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