In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well—some inspired by a weekly theme and some not, but always songs worth hearing.
There’s a lot of pop culture to look forward to in 2014. If Indian has its way, though, we may not survive to see much of it. The veteran Chicago noise-metal group has been hurling itself at the bars of its cage for a decade, but it was 2011’s Guiltless that finally showed just how desperately nihilistic Indian could sound. Due January 21 from Relapse Records, From All Purity is the follow-up to Guiltless—and it’s an even more harrowing descent into a twisted, tortured tableau of thunderous doom, charred hardcore, and heart-scouring hopelessness.
“Rhetoric Of No,” on From All Purity, says it all. With riffs that curdle bone marrow and vocals that sound like AC/DC’s Brian Johnson being force-fed a jet engine, the song is an unholy union of bestial despair and industrialized noise. But there’s also a sinuous, speaking-in-tongues circularity to “Rhetoric Of No” that seems to hint at vaster tragedies than those of the soul. This shit is apocalyptic to a degree that few metallic Armageddon-mongers have managed to hit in the past few years. 2012 was the year the Mayans predicted the world would end, but Indian may have just provided a minor, two-year adjustment.