Austin foursome Future Death are the second band to name themselves in honor of the third best Flaming Lips album—and, like the first such group, they share very little aesthetically with their source inspiration beyond a root interest in the collision of melody and noise. However, while the band is barely two years old, it’s not premature to suggest that Future Death are capable of pulling off a Lips-like evolution from acid-punk misfits to balloon-popping art-rock visionaries.
Like their 2013 self-titled EP, Future Death’s debut full-length Special Victim favors unapologetically tinny, distorted production that suggests it was captured on an iPhone Voice Memos app and replayed at internal-speaker-frying volume. (It was actually recorded at a former Dallas funeral home-turned-studio owned by indie super-producer John Congleton, possibly from inside one of the leftover coffins.) But rather than flatten out their sound, the limited sonic range mostly accentuates the increasingly sophisticated songcraft trying to poke through the surface squall.
Much of that first EP was written by drummer Alton Jenkins and guitarist Bill Kenny prior to the arrival of bassist Jeremy Humphries and Craiglist-sourced vocalist Angie Kang—and yet, the fact that Special Victim was a complete group effort only serves to amplify the band’s inherent contradictions. Future Death often sound like a band at war with itself, exhibiting the form of a prog-rock act but the lo-fi ferocity of a garage-punk band, as Kang’s beaming, sugar-coated melodies are brutally pushed around by the convulsing arrangements like a pinball permanently caught between two bumpers. With the blissfully berserker opener “Riot Trains”, the joyride abandon of “Basements”, and cymbal-crashing fireworks of “Roman Devices,” Future Death effectively pair the in-the-red assault of Perfect Pussy with the see-saw, guitar-scrambled sing-alongs of Marnie Stern, rendering anarchy and ecstasy as one and the same.
The pancaked production doesn’t always complement Future Death's songs; at times, it renders the band’s boundless energy as an indistinct blur. (In particular, the compulsively contorting “Speedweed” begs for greater clarity that would allow Jenkins’ oft-astonishing Zach Hill/Greg Saunier-inspired stickwork to propel the song, rather than be reduced to background clatter that clashes with Kang’s chorus line.) But you can also hear the band pushing against their preset parameters to open up their sound into unchartered territory: “Junkhummer” begins as a shrill, staccato math-punk pummel but, two minutes in, Jenkins trips up the beat and sends the song spinning off into a delirious extended coda, with Kang’s voice smeared into the sort of eerie, oscillating screams you’d hear from riders trapped on a malfunctioning amusement-park ride. In terms of confidence and scope (if not fidelty), Special Victim is an impressive step up from Future Death’s inaugural EP outing—but, as their band name not too subtly suggests, the truly killer stuff could still be to come.
