Yes, yes, it's another yellow flannel review, but I DON'T WANNA WEAR IT! It's hot. Sorry if I'm a little sweaty and distraught, okay? But, listen, I need to talk to you about this very good, very very good, very enjoyable wonderful new Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal album DOOMED!

Yeah, here we have a brand new album from rapper, writer, singer, producer, songwriter, streamer, and commentator. A man who continues to do it all in a way that few are, or have, Mr. Open Mike Eagle. Someone who I have been covering on this channel for quite a while now and at this point you could really say this man is a veteran of maybe what we could call the "indie rap" scene. He has thrived and survived through multiple iterations of it. He was there laying the groundwork and forging his own unique sound during a time when, you know, this scene was starting to kind of transition over into the online world, with records like Animal Hospital and Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes.

And then immediately following this, we have a period that many of Mike's fans believe was kind of like an artistic high point for him, where he was coming out with his classics. Also very active in the short-lived Hellfire Club collective. But yeah, during this time period you had the very witty sharp and unique Dark Comedy album. Also Brick Body Kids Still Daydream, an amazing album that ages better and better with each passing year, really an epic ode to Mike's youth and, you know, the concept of gentrification and generationally changing neighborhoods.

And currently we are in the midst of what I guess you could say is like a third act in Mike's career. Maybe even starting to exit that a little into a fourth. And this period in Mike's catalog is marked by a lot of turbulence and change. There was 2020's Anime, Trauma and Divorce, an album that is about exactly what it says it is, and not really a high point for me in his catalog either, though the record was very admirably raw and unfiltered. And then we had a very stark change in tone and sound on the following, a tape called Component System with the Auto Reverse which featured a much more raw and chaotic sound really one of these moments that's like a mixtape-as-album type of experience, where the performances and production and overall sound quality was a lot more scuffed and, you know, purposefully rough around the edges. And while this may not be, like, my favorite Mike Eagle project or anything like that, it certainly had its moments in hearing him kind of jump into something that was so purposefully all over the place and unkempt, led to an experience that was pretty freeing and cathartic.

But what could have been a bit of a one-off moment here kind of expanded, not only into a few other projects that felt equally jagged, but also Mike continued to stick to the visual of putting this big combo stereo unit headpiece on his person as a representation of him and what he's doing. I guess as a means of trying to create some kind of separation between him and his art and present himself with maybe a bit more mystique in this phase of his career, especially since he has embarked on some other grinds lately, as these days Mike does some pretty regular Twitch streams on top of all the touring and album releases. And Mike's streams, which I very highly recommend you watch, usually involve him commenting on hip-hop culture and the music industry broadly. And given his time and experience in music, a lot of his takes are often very funny and enlightening.

Which brings us to this new record over here, which again arrives after a lot of changes in growth, and is additionally notable for several other reasons. For one, Mike is still rocking this stereo combo unit on the visual with the front cover. Also this thing is being released through billy woods's own Backwoodz Studioz label, which makes for a pretty sensible and fire crossover, honestly. This record is also a full-fledged collaboration with producer Kenny Segal who has not only collaborated with Mike on a lot of material over the years, but has also helped mastermind some pretty fantastic projects with other artists, too, especially billy woods two times over. DOOMED! is also a bit of a concept record as well, with its statement of intent put pretty plainly on the front cover, with this thing being about a relationship that ends in every universe. Though in a recent interview with Mike, he did go on to say that he was pulling inspiration from all sorts of breakups for the material on this album, platonic or otherwise. And again, given the topic of Mike's 2020 record, he is no stranger to themes of separation.

But now on this record he is revisiting that concept in a way that feels broader and also deeper. Which, of course, makes this record in a lot of ways very sad and very depressing, downright dismal, too. But Mike continues to soldier through all of it with this expressive delivery and the dry, punchy wit of a seasoned comedy writer, making DOOMED!, I would say, enjoyably bittersweet. As oftentimes on this record, Mike is very much writing for impact and clarity, even over some of the most despondent and melty beats from the Kenny Segal vault. Take, for example, the intro, which is marked with these skeletal keys and droning layers of horns and strings. The rhythms really move at a sloth's pace, too.

But Mike contrasts this energy more than he matches it as he paints a picture of a relationship where he is just completely disassociated because he clearly doesn't want to be there. He's lost hope, he's lost interest, and things have gotten so bleak, but, given all of the cartoony references and the way he sort of hits with some of these one-liners, clearly, he sees at least a little bit of a weird humor in it all. Following this, though, the momentum picks up with "Streets of Rage: Public Arguments Edition," which is a piece of sleek jazz-rap with some prominent vibraphone, and Mike trading off between rap verses and his trademark politely sung group vocals, which, to me, are very lullaby-style. And this whole track describes what feels like a fraught date, or just going out and being in the midst of a very tense back-and-forth, with Gothic Tropic kind of playing the other side of the dynamic here.

And once again, this is an instance of Mike giving you exactly what he is telling you in the title, but the title is so outlandish it makes you kind of have a second take. Because yeah, this is all about, like, not getting along in a certain very specific situation in a relationship, and Mike kind of peppers this with choruses that make reference to controls in a fighting game. Then with the title track we get what feels like a little bit of a light boom-bap piece that's almost like a writing exercise of sorts if you could take all of these different elements of breakups and breaking up and turn them into a series of braggadocious flexes. Mike kind of couches them as copes by the song's end. But still, it's very funny the way he frames it and honestly geniusly witty with the kind of, you know, bit he's trying to pull off here very successfully.

With "Unfinished Concrete Initials," not only is that another heart-wrenching title, but Hemlock Ernst kind of comes in as a feature here and reinforces a lot of the album's themes with his own verse. Also another killer instrumental from Kenny with these haunting chorus group vocal loops. But what hits even harder for me is the following track, "Don't Go Look," which I'm sure a lot of people listening to this are going to find relatable. Not only do we get another powerful kind of slow, syrupy instrumental on this one, but Mike's lyrics are framed like a prayer asking god for the strength to not go look. And it's made pretty clear what 'it' is is like, you know, the process of maybe taking a peek at how your ex is doing online or something, after the relationship is over. Either that, or Mike is looking for the strength to not go looking in places and for things where he has experienced pain or disappointment before, as there's multiple lines on this track that speak of these kinds of mirages or moments where the grass seems greener on the other side of the fence when, in fact, it's not.

And this is illustrated with hilarious and genius lines like "I watch the snippet, it's a porn backwards/I'd rather tongue kiss a bug-zapper/A jail disguised as a greener pasture/Every peak is a complete disaster."

Following this, we get "She Swear I'm Colorblind," which has a nice billy woods feature on it. It's a very slow, dreamy jazz-rap that, honestly, given its pace, given its lower volume, was kind of a tough sell as a single for me. But it has a lot more impact in the context of the album, especially given its lyrical themes, as the track is very much about being locked in a series of disagreements and moments where you and your partner just don't see eye to eye, and kind of illustrates how a mere series of rifts in perspective can really tear two people apart.

Meanwhile, billy's verse on the back end not only brings all these different chilling signs of isolation, but also ends with an amazing closing line: "It's glimpses from a window/It's fingers stuck in ears when everything crescendo."

Another highlight for me was "The Irredeemable Magic Man," which, given my millennial perspective, I pretty much read as an Adventure Time reference. And the personality type and antics of the guy Mike is describing here very much seems like that bastard Magic Man, kind of sauntering in randomly and doing all this shit to completely blow your life up and ruin everything. And after he ruins everything, the way he just disappears feels like a weird kind of breakup in itself.

Then "The Many Hustles of My Lonely Time Traveling Uncle" feels kind of like a breakup with money or a social paradigm in which, you know, being able to kind of hustle CDRs and little knickknacks and things was actually profitable. You know, pre-internet, when a man could make an honest living selling some junk!

And with Mike's lyrics, with the instrumental as well, being as bombastic and as weird as it is, like, it's, it's definitely one of the biggest moments of levity on the record as well.

But then as we move forward from here, I kind of feel the record getting increasingly more and more uncomfortable. Whether it's the sort of bland and mid-paced "Trying to Remember What I Aimed At" or "Schrödinger's Green Room," which is maybe the goofiest cut on the entire thing. From here, we hit an interlude which kind of has a very interesting back-and-forth talking about preferences in terms of how a breakup arrives or how you kind of move through a breakup in terms of crossing over that initial threshold of making it clear that this is not going to be a thing anymore.

And "Sweetheart Jail," while I do love kind of the lyrical play going on with this track, I do wish it were longer. "Infinity War Spoilers," like, you know, weird comic book action movie tie-ins just hit very strange for me.

But yeah, the more I listen to this record, the more I feel like it's coming to an unceremonious end, it is falling apart at the seams. It's kind of like breaking up with me by making our relationship more and more untenable.

And this feeling reaches a peak on the closing track, which is not only a highlight for me, but in concept, I find to be very interesting. It's called "Watching A Movie Called Freedom By Myself," and it's so quiet, it's so slow, it's whisper-quiet, almost as if it's being written and performed while a movie is playing and you're trying to pull the song off while being quiet and not interrupting anybody else's movie-going experience.

But I love the way that Mike kind of ties in all of these different movie references and parallels and nods to going to the cinema and tying that into breaking up and likens the whole thing, obviously, to being able to leave at a certain point because there's no post-credit scene. There's nothing like that to wait for after the credits; you can just go, you can just head out, there's no reason for anybody else to sit here any longer than they have to.

And the song goes so long, and the pacing is so slow, it's almost like it's daring you to leave in the middle of it. I do genuinely like it, though. I stuck around for the very end of the song. But still, there's something about the framing of this track and the message it's sending that feels so hollow and so unfulfilling, but I mean, the reality is that that's sometimes how the finale in a breakup feels. It's over, it's done, there's nothing else to really be said or gained.

But again, as the title says, there's also freedom and a sense of relief in that, too, if the relationship, presuming it's got some connection to the feelings that are expressed on the opening track, is unfulfilling and not serving you. Which actually is kind of like the silver lining to the dark cloud of this record. Because in so many ways this album does feel like, you know, Mike kind of coming to terms and giving himself a bit of a sense of closure here in terms of assuring himself that we can truly just close the book on this one and be done with it.

But yeah, even if there were some tracks that felt maybe a bit too brief and underdeveloped, which is maybe an inevitability on a record like this one that's gonna jump around so much sonically and emotionally, still, I think Mike managed to put out one of his best and most thoughtful and most ambitious records in a minute on this one. Which is one I am feeling a light-to-decent 8 on this album.