Guilt Drill - Anti-Music

'fear-urself', the first song on the EP, is not worth your time. I had a hard time listening to it on my first run and on replays of "Anti-Music", I felt an overall sense of dread returning to the song. The lo-fi nature of the guitars are extremely generic and the vocals are extremely ground up and distorted. Unlike other industrial releases where there's a sense of production to the raw nature of the song, Guilt Drill lacks a good ground base for this song. 

I was certain that the rest of the EP was going to fall flat, but found myself pleasantly surprised on the following song 'priestess_of_The_veil.mp3'. It's a minimal track featuring low, somewhat growling vocals from Guilt Drill on top of a steady, rhythmic beat. The guitars flowing in the background still sound generic, but thankfully they are not the mainstay of the show. There are also times on the track where other electronic elements, such as the whistling like sounds that appear at the one-minute and twenty second mark, play out and add a bit of refreshment to the song. 



I think 'break.god' is Guilt Drill at their strongest on the EP. 'break.god' plays around with old school hip-hop elements and drags them into the underground industrial territory. A little bit of static and noise adds a wonderful crunch to the song. Guilt Drill's voice is also pretty good here; spoken-word rap is played out and isn't scarred by unnecessary scraps of noise. This is a direction that Guilt Drill should explore further down the line. Unfortunately, the EP ends on a downward note. 'mechanical_man' contains Guilt Drill utilizing long notes in his vocals but the artist sounds bored while doing so. The lo-fi sound sticks here, with bass guitar making up for most of the track, though it is very loopy and repetitive. After a minute of the song on each pass-through of the EP, I wanted it to end. 

Guilt Drill's "Anti-Music" leaves me polarized, then. The industrial and experimental artist can shine with songs such as 'priestess_of_The_veil.mp3' and moreso with the amazing industrial hip-hop track 'break.god'. But he also falters with songs such as 'fear_urself' and 'mechanical_man' which are skippable. I can recommend two of the four songs on the EP, and that does not bode well. This is a release where I'll recommend it to my friends, but I'll have to be picky about which songs I show them due to the inconsistency on "Anti-Music". I would like to see Guilt Drill continue along in the industrial hip-hop genre to see what they could do with it; I'm sure we would see great things from them then. But, as of right now, "Anti-Music" is okay at best. 

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Jan 30 2021