Spectreview: Backxwash – I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES

Released: June 20, 2021

Horrorcore
(Industrial Hip-Hop)
(Experimental)

-LIGHT CORAL-

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I feel love and betrayal
The prophecies will be livid
‘Cause harmony is replaced with idiocity of these bitches
I’ll probably never visit
These farer reaches with kinship
Part of me starts to miss ’em
So pardon me in these lyrics”

“Be as honest as you want to be and create the art that you want to.” Those were Ashanti Mutinta’s words upon receiving the 2020 Polaris Prize for her debut album – becoming the first transgender person in Canadian history to do so – and it’s as lucid a statement of purpose as perhaps can be. The art that Mutinta produces as Backxwash radiates unfiltered sincerity, from the past-peak nature of horrorcore’s gothic aesthetic to the blaring noise and gripping dissonance of her production work to the way her raps barrel out of her chest in torrents. To listen to a Backxwash record is to witness self-flagellation; to listen closer, feeling her words hook your inner demons like fishing tackle, is to engage in it.

I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES is not a significant improvement on her breakthrough, mainly because there isn’t a lot of room left for the sliders to rise. It is, however, a refinement. At a bare minimum its increased length means more of what made God Has Nothing to Do with This Leave Him Out of It so compelling: more catharsis; more grievance; more deft, dynamic combinations of genres. Though the record is still as stylistically variegated as ever, it’s slightly less focused on rock textures and more explicitly hip-hop; that makes it a more focused experience, but it also loses a little bit of the around-the-corner surprise that drove its predecessor.

What it remains, however, is potent. Clearance guidelines mean I LIE HERE BURIED doesn’t have the freedom to employ a Black Sabbath excerpt, but the one-two punch of “PURPOSE OF PAIN” and “WAIL OF THE BANSHEE” still works brilliantly as an intro. The former, with its haunting quasi-mantric instruction, establishes mood and context; the latter does the same but for content, as Mutinta concisely rattles through drug consumptions and weaves between extremes. Everything afterward builds upon that foundation, with a clear highlight in the titanic title track (note how naturally Mutinta’s narrative crescendoes over the track, especially where it’s punctuated by Ada Rook’s iconic vocal writhing) and other standout moments in her duo with Austin-based rapper Censored Dialogue on “TERROR PACKETS” and in the menacing, clipping.-produced “BLOOD IN THE WATER.” The whole middle section, actually, is universally strong by nature of inertia: “IN THY HOLY NAME” drones underneath a skewering of evangelical hypocrisy before instilling terror by disintegrating out of nowhere, while “SONGS OF SINNERS” finds Sadie Dupuis laying down a surprisingly fitting hook over the chorus’s overwhelming chiming. By its last few tracks it may feel like the momentum has diminished, but the quality remains consistent, especially in the breakdown of “NINE HELLS.”

Conceptually, everything we’ve come to recognize as central to Backxwash’s art makes its home here as well. There’s the way she directs horrorcore’s fixation on violence almost entirely inward, with bookending tracks that color suicide as both an escape and a rebirth, respectively. There’s also the juxtaposition between the grandiosity of Christian imagery and the direness of grim reality in tracks like the excoriating “666 IN LUXAXA” and “IN THY HOLY NAME.” And, of course, there’s the idea of harsh noise as a cleansing agent, spelled out at the outset and embodied by the collection of fiery productions that soundtracks Mutinta’s pained musings. She might be a rising talent, but there are still a great deal of people yet to be exposed to Backxwash’s unique artistry. For those people, I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES will make for a blazingly potent introduction; the rest will have the familiar pleasure of traveling, once again, to the pits of hell.

Recommended for a good thing.