by Amy Rowe (@bathbinch)
New Orleans art punks Special Interest dropped their second album The Passion Of at a time when many needed a soundtrack to their suddenly very dystopian lives. In June 2020, there was civil unrest peaking around the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police -- in the midst of a pandemic that forced many inside their homes for an undetermined amount of time. Things were bleak and some people took to the streets, shutdowns be damned.
On The Passion Of, Special Interest marries thrashing guitars with industrial, techno beats for an album that makes you want to dance during times like these, what feels like the brink of apocalypse. The band pushes the insidious issue of gentrification to the forefront on noisy techno heavy-hitter “All Tomorrow’s Carry.” “I watch the city crumble and arise from the rubble, tawdry condos and a high-rise suite,” singer Alli Logout shouts on the track.
Her lyrics also befit what was then going on in the heavily policed streets in cities across the country around the album’s release. "Would you bat an eye waiting for war machines to pass you by?" Logout asks. “But aren’t we going out tonight? Aren’t we going out?” She intimates her message with powerful urgency, forcing an uncomfortable reality to be reckoned with. The track even sets a dark scene with its opening: a warped, looped sample says “I just want to party.” The words are those of the party-loving character Trash in the zombie movie “Return of the Living Dead,” who did not meet a happy fate.
The album from front to back has a biting, vicious quality that goes beyond Logout’s screaming vocals. The synths and drum machine fight to be heard just as loud as the hardcore guitar riffs. The queer punk crew gets vulnerable on the intimate “Street Pulse Beat.” The tempo slows down and Logout launches into lines about love in the apocalypse: “For am I not your necromancer? Your lover in the end of time, in the end of days. Your saviour. Won't you take my wise rough hand?” It feels like Logout is singing to us, and having their company to help navigate the end of days doesn’t sound like a bad situation.