To talk about The Body, you have to first talk about the space they leave open for their collaborators. From early in their catalog, there has been a drive to be both devastatingly heavy but also unique. Like Thou, who are perhaps their only true contemporaries, you never quite know what will come with the next release. On core albums, where The Body come together as a duo to compose a set of new work, there is often a conscious direction, which also may include many collaborators. From as early as 2013’s Christ, Redeemers, The Body has worked with The Assembly of Light Choir and Chrissy Wolpert, who brought choral and clean-singing additions to balance to the crushing, often overpowering nature of their albums. Wolpert returned for 2016’s No One Deserves Happiness, when They Body set out to make “the grossest pop album of all time,” which combined their knowingly heavy sound with what the album description on Bandcamp calls “80s dance tracks.” On tracks like “Shelter Is Illusory,” a drum machine is added to the plodding, nostalgically tom-heavy beat with just the hint of a synth melody buried somewhere deep in the atmosphere created by distortion.
Then, perhaps equally influential on the progression of their style and depth, The Body releases albums where collaboration is more the focus. In 2011, The Body & Braveyoung’s Nothing Passes was released, which featured a more cinematic atmosphere (created by stringed, almost atonal ambient arrangements), and begs The Body to slow even further. Braveyoung’s post-punk, delay and reverb heavy tone is given permission to be darker and The Body has space to, at times, be more beautiful.
Now, nearly ten years later, members of Braveyoung have formed MSC and are collaborating with The Body again on I Don’t Ever Want To Be Alone. While samples and looping has been filtered throughout The Body’s catalog in past releases (especially in the collaboration album with The Haxan Cloak, I Shall Die Here, where samples were deployed in a cleaner, death industrial meets Berlin school style), it’s never been used in quite this way. Deeply tonal, saw-heavy synth tracks like “Hell Is The Self”, which border on witch house levels of side-chain ducking and instrumentation (a la bands like D E P R E S S E D 0 4 0), are presented next to tracks like “All See What Other Sees,” which has a much more ethereal, almost uplifting quality and a sample that could have been pulled from a radio hit. It’s catchy in a way that doesn’t feel right for the other elements of the song, but somehow works so well. Despite the punching, bass-heavy drums and the ever-filtering distorted pads, the song maintains a driving energy, which is how I feel about the entire album. Even with different elements and styles, there is a strong through-line between every track (something I believe is accomplished by using a carefully curated palette of distortions and instrumental tones). I Don’t Ever Want to Be Alone is a devastating and diverse album that both highlights and challenges the sounds of two seemingly different tone-heavy projects to great effect.
I Don’t Ever Want To Be Alone is out now. MSC’s first and second EP were combined recently on Bandcamp to make the release I Close My Mind and Lock It. The Body has a new album out on January 29th called I’ve Seen All I Need To See.