The Black Lips – Apocalypse Love | Reviews

Remaining into the Black Lips states significantly extra about what kind of individual you are than what form of music you like. With a discography that runs the gamut from grime-ridden, reverberated punk to jangly, glistening pop to steel-toed, outlaw rock, the Black Lips get rid of their pores and skin on each individual chaotic impulse and depart only the popular thread of an untraceable, hooligan self-assurance driving. Black Lips fandom usually means hopping in the back seat of the band’s souped-up warm rod and allowing them consider you on whatsoever rampageous journey they desire up, realizing that you’ll conclusion up in some illusory fantasy land, whiplashed and asking yourself how you bought there. Hope the unpredicted, or no matter what Oscar Wilde reported. 

That is why it is not surprising that the Black Lips’ unsatiable itch for shape-shifting rears its snarling, hydra-headed mug on their tenth studio album, ‘Apocalypse Love’. It is a freakshow, a madcap assortment of misfit anthems tinged in sardonic absurdity, with the Lips’ signature snarl all in excess of it. ‘No Rave’ is an incendiary opener, romping and stomping with a laser-concentrated club child groove and spellbinding Paganist fright. ‘Lost Angel’ is a soundtrack of desperado carnality, amber with the scorch of wild-Western cinema. Title keep track of ‘Apocalypse Love’ is a twangy, Bonnie-and-Clydian nation ballad established in opposition to the mushroom cloud at the close of the entire world. 

‘Sharing My Cream’ may well be the shiniest jewel in the Black Lips’ gilded crown of idiosyncratic oddity, so comically eccentric and indescribably quirky that it is immune to criticism. ‘The Concubine’ is a fitting close to this jaunt through the Lips’ funhouse of hallucinatory mania. The beginning of the track emits the 1960s rock ‘n’ roll-reminiscent like-struck sweetness so integral to the Black Lips’ aura, but the song’s twinkly audio fades into spectral cacophony and finishes with Television static, a reminder of the record’s putting Lynchian oddity. 

The Black Lips have often been not possible to pin down, but this report sees them acquiring more and more feral. ‘Apocalypse Love’ is a primal cry, a maniacal adore letter to their sonic anarchy and the unpredictability of the entire world we are living in. It is a discordant document, swerving via genres and emotions at breakneck pace, but which is what the Black Lips are all about. To quote Oscar Wilde once again, “Moderation is a lethal point.” In that situation, the Black Lips are immortal. 

7/10

Words and phrases: Bella Savignano

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