Anthony Fantano: Hi everyone. Bigthony Creeped Out here. The internet's busiest music nerd. And it's time for a review of the new Street Sects album, Dry Drunk.

What's going on?

Annie is Undead: Hey, guys. Anthony is taking a nap right now. He's dead tired.

Fantano: I'm not tired at all, and I really want to review the new Street Sects album.

Annie: No, you don't.

Fantano: Can I at least review the Street Sex album?

Annie: Fine. All right. Hello, everyone. Once again, eternal and most infernal hails. My name is Anthony is Undeadtano, back again with another review, this time for the industrial noir project, Street Sects.

Street Sects formed in 2013 with two members, Leo Ashline and Sean Ringsmuth. They have two full albums, 2016's End Position and 2018's The Kicking Mule. They also have a couple of EPs, as well as various singles that have been released here and there, specifically the Gentrification series. They have also put out a plethora of other singles here and there throughout the years. They draw very sonically from various other industrial and noise projects such as Skinny Puppy and Atrax Morgue. They also take heavy influence from post-hardcore and early metalcore, such as Portraits of Past and Converge.

The band did momentarily split in the early 2020s, but did come back together in 2022, not only for a tour with HEALTH, but also to release two singles, "X Amount" and the fifth of the "Gentrification" series. Now, a few years later, we have not only one, but two albums from the project, one under the main title, Street Sects, with Dry Drunk, and then the other with a different name, Street Sex, with Full Color Eclipse.

With the drastic sound shift between End Position and Kicking Mule, I was wondering what Dry Drunk was going to sound like since Kicking Mule is a lot softer than End Position. And Dry Drunk has a bit of a blend of both, but definitely keeps much more of an abrasive edge, just like the very first album. And even on record, in an interview, Ashaline did state that Dry Drunk is much more of a companion piece to End Position than Kicking Mule. While having a few softer moments sprinkled in, the whole 39-minute run time definitely maintains a much harsher sound for them, and it is a fantastic return to form for what is mostly an incredibly harsh project.

The album opens with "A List of Persons I Will Harm", which starts off with a much softer melody and digs right into a much more aggressive, abrasive sound, then goes into the three songs that were the first singles released over the course of three months, being "The Glass Shit House", :Entertainment Law", and "Spitting Images", all three of varying quality.

"Glass Shit House" is an industrial atonal track that has a lot of heaviness to it, but the instrumentation and the mix swirl in too much with the vocals, and you have a harder time making out what's going on, and it's just generally the weaker of the three singles.

However, "Entertainment Law" and "Spitting Images" are two of the best singles that released within this album cycle as well as in the previous album cycles. "Entertainment Law" is much more of an industrial banger song that is a lot dancier than other tracks on the album. And "Spitting Images" also maintains some of that party edge to it. It feels like you are on the high of doing various kinds of drugs at a party before the inevitable crash out, which comes towards the middle of the album.

There are very much parallels between these two tracks and also songs that you hear on Full Color Eclipse, because you see on Full Color Eclipse that they do much more of a pop-centric album since the duo have a very deep fondness for pop music, and were very much experimenting with that sound. However, it carries over a lot nicer on Dry Drunk with these two singles, specifically because it captures the abrasiveness of their music while also having a bit more of a groove to them. I especially recommend "Spitting Images" for being essentially a reintroduction to the project since they had not released music in so long, and especially as the first intro to a brand new album after seven years.

Kicking into the main part of the album, we then have the song "Love Makes You Fat", which is one of the heaviest tracks on the entire project. It is a true return to form and feels like it could have been a B-side off of End Position. The snarls and yelps that Leo lets throughout the entire song are just haunting, and some of the synth parts sound like a wood chipper, to put it bluntly. Any industrial instrument that you could see in a construction yard feels like it's incorporated into this track.

While "Playboy Body" is an intro to the second half of the album, it is also probably the weakest track. The instrumentation pitches up a bit too high, and it feels like they're just throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks. And lyrically, even though Street Sects are not the most subtle project, nor have they ever really been, I think that it goes against them on this song, because not only is the delivery just on the weaker end of things, but also, with the instrumentation being all over the place, it just does not hit, especially in the context of the album, and it drags down the second half before it picks back up again.

Going from "Playboy Body" we then enter "Baker Act", which has an intro that is very reminiscent, surprisingly, of a Big Black song you would probably hear off of Songs About Fucking. It is a song that maintains a nice fluid amount of vocal delivery and instrumentation. You see the two playing off of each other a lot more on this song in a way that you did not hear on the previous track. And it also just has an incredible bit towards the end of it with Leo shrieking his head off. It's like Brillo pads on my brain lobes. Absolutely fantastic. Sort of like one of their live gimmicks with the chainsaw. It definitely feels like you hear a chainsaw cutting right through the song, which is a very easy comparison, considering so much of the music throughout this album actually includes various cuts of samples of different construction equipment and bits from noir movies, be it English or French, which in the case of "Baker Act," is a sample from a French film.

You also see the group experimenting a lot more on this album in a way that you have not seen on other projects. I really appreciate the fact that they have decided to push their sound forward, maybe not always to the best results, in my opinion, but the fact that they are willing to go forward and experiment with a sound that they feel comfortable with is pretty fantastic. And getting Ben Chisholm in on production really seems like it pushed them as a group to want to progress their sound as opposed to stay stagnant.

"Eject Button" is a great example of this, which uses a bit more of a sci-fi sounding synthesizer that really creates a nice atmosphere while maintaining the general cohesive nature of the rest of the album by being pretty disgusting.

"A Dying Wage" is one of the less traditionally grotesque songs on the project. However, it does have these delicious rattling high hats that create an atmosphere that you don't see in a lot of their other slow songs. It feels like the song you'd hear in the background of a very dingy strip club that's got really sticky seats. Around "A Dying Wage," though, is when you start to see the final gasps of the heaviness that you witnessed throughout the entire first half of the album. From here, it is just a come down, and you start to see the grueling reality of what is taking place and transpiring throughout the entirety of the project. "Riding the Clock" is about when you start seeing the big picture come into focus.

A decent chunk of the album indulges in the debaucherous behavior of whoever the main character is, and his relationship with his wife and women in his life, and his intake of drugs and alcohol, and the behavior that he thrusts upon others. Around now is when you start seeing the consequences of his actions start to play out and him realizing exactly what he has done.

The final songs are "Murphy Artist" and "The Rooms". "Murphy Artist", specifically, being about the main character, whoever he is, taking out the mistress of his wife at a dingy rundown hotel room, and "The Rooms" essentially just being him exiting the situation, going on his way to work, acting like nothing had ever really happened to begin with, and that his night of debauchery and horrible behavior was just inflicted by the drugs and the alcohol that he had consumed. It is a very solemn and very low-key ending for this album, especially with the beautiful guitar crescendos at the very beginning. You really see the project able to handle being softer on this track, and I think this is the best example of Streets Sects doing a slower song.

Dry Drunk is a very bleak record. It has a lot of very heavy subject material, not for everyone. The sound is pretty all over the place, and you generally see a lot of progression, but also a lot of stagnation in the band's sound. The complaints I have with the slower tracks are ones that I similarly have with The Kicking Mule. I just think that the project is at its best when they're going all balls to the wall and just letting everything out, including the kitchen sink. I think that the very beautiful ambient-sounding interludes between each track are really nice, and I think they cap off the album really nicely since they fade right back into the intro.

However, I do think that there are moments where the interludes sound a little bit better than some of the songs themselves. So I think that maybe there could have been less or maybe more put into a couple of different songs to make them have a similarly completed feel as the interludes do.

And also this is a complaint that I have with a decent chunk of industrial albums, even classics, but the mixing is a little all over the place, especially on songs like "The Glass Shit House", where it feels like Ashline's vocals are pushed too far into the back and you don't really hear them as well, which is unfortunate because I think Leo Ashline has an absolutely fantastic and haunting voice, which would have lent itself better to being actually heard on top of the instrumentals.

While the album does have quite a few weaker moments, and there are different attributes to it that I think are a little derivative and maybe do not capture the full essence of the project as a whole, I do think that it is a really good return to form, and it's really fantastic not only seeing them do one album, but two albums, and really give themselves a chance to experiment with both. I think that each release is going to keep seeing them do better and better, and I foresee them consistently putting in the work to make something that is absolutely fantastic and true to them as artists. So for that, I'm going to give this a strong 7 to light 8.

Fantano: So again, since I'm not dead, can I review the Street Sex?

Annie: Fine. It's your channel. Go ahead.

Fantano: Okay. What the fuck is this? This is all discombobulated. You messed up my whole thing. It's all messed up.

Street Sex is a different band, but also the same band. Why? It seems we have the old band, or most of the members of the band, who want to work outside of the perceived boundaries of music they typically operate within. So they start another band or a side project of some sort to just dive into unknown or under-explored territory. Think Yo La Tango doing Condo Fucks or Radiohead - The Smile, that thing.

And while Street Sex is different from Street Sects, I wouldn't say it's the farthest cry away from the original band's trademark brand of blistering electro-industrial rock with touches of noise and power electronics.

Except with Street Sex, we are stripping away a lot of the most abrasive elements of the Street Sects sound, and then throwing in the throbby, groovy, rigid drum and synth sequences that would be the perfect soundtrack for your next goth night DJ set, with clear nods to the most accessible elements of legendary groups and outfits like Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode. But Street Sex is also very clearly informed by many of the advances that have been made over the past 10 to 15 years in EBM and darkwave and electropop, as well as electroclash.

My general take on this side project album is that it's not quite as strong as Dry Drunk, but it is better than you would expect, given how little pop appeal seems to factor in Street Sects' usual musical recipes. The beats and production on this record are really its most major selling point and are consistently visceral and danceable. The song structures are super solid as well, with the hooks across this record consistently popping track after track.

But I do think Street Sex's Full Color Eclipse does have some drawbacks, though, mostly due to the vocals, which for sure are toned down in comparison with any number of tracks on Dry Drunk or any other Street Sects albums. But they are still pretty grating and strained to the point where they sour any melodic appeal much of the singing may have. Either that or they're blatantly off-key, such as on tracks like "Half Laugh" as well as "Going Up". Moments like these, I think, could have been done better with a more subtle approach or just another take.

The lyrical content as well, while I did expect something explicit and sexual going into a record with a title and a cover such as this, I do think there is definitely a border between something being sexual and explicit and actually being on some level sexy, which I do think much of this record fails to reach. Sure, while that lack of sensuality may be intentional, the persistently edgy writing across these songs does stale out before the album is even over.

Going from the opening lines on the first track of the record, "Go stick your phone up your ass / Set the tone to vibrate / I will call when I can / I've got a full week ahead," to snide whaling about fucking until your face turns blue.

Honestly, some of the best tracks on this record are the ones that are so aggressive and explosive they only sound maybe a few shades away from a track that could have just been on a straight-up Street Sects album, be it either "Rock Salt" or "Coming of Age".

But yeah, outside of those moments, I just didn't really get as much from Street Sex as I did Street Sects, which I guess is fine. I mean, this is a side project, and it's not like the sanctity of Street Sects itself is being made or broken on the back of this project's quality. So yeah, I'm feeling about a decent to strong 5 on this one.

Anthony Fantano. Street Sects/Street Sex. Forever.