Every so often, you come across an album that truly confuses you. Stabscotch’s PRISON JAR is one of those albums.
Prison Jar sounds like the narrator from Naked Lunch holding court on Instagram Live, ranting into the mic and noodling on a keyboard while a grindcore band plays behind him. On the album, the four members of Stabscotch meld dissonant guitar explosions, freeform drum fills, glittery synth freakouts, and Metaverse street preacher proclamations, creating a 3D-printed musical chimera that follows only its own internal logic. Lead single “XALLELUJAH DÆMON” begins with the sound of a galactic computer crashing and rebooting, and proceeds to whip back and forth between passages that contain punk skeeze, vocoder euphoria, metallic grandeur, and what would happen if you told a powerful AI to set its own self-immolation to music. Bassist/vocalist/producer Tyler Blensdorf stitches these disparate elements together with surrealist howls. Here’s one of his observations, for example: “FIRE IN MINDS OUR LIGHT~melt me down and paint me~LOOOOOOUD~ THE IMAGE IS BOILING, WHEN I THINK OF WATER(i think of u~).” Same, when I hear this song. Check it out if you like Fire-Toolz and that sort of thing.
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