by Ursula Wren (@xflowerviolence)
Lee Buford and Dylan Walker are no strangers to collaboration. Their bands — The Body and Full of Hell, respectively — have collaborated on two full-length albums. While neither band has ever been accused of playing it safe, the duo wanted a platform to fuse their dark, heavy, and experimental bona fides with their shared love of electronic music. Thus, Sightless Pit was born.
Lockstep Bloodwar is the second album from Sightless Pit. The first featured a third collaborator, Kristin Hayter of Lingua Ignota, who split from the group on good terms between installments. Now a duo, Buford and Walker sought to fill the void left by Hayter with a dizzying array of guest features. The crown jewel among those features is the late Gangsta Boo, beloved and enigmatic rapper of Three 6 Mafia fame.
Musically, Lockstep Bloodwar is a crucible of influences that, on the whole, is greater than the sum of its parts. Fans of Walker and Buford’s other projects will be unsurprised to find a nearly uninterrupted pad of dark ambiance and noise-inflected blasts throughout the record. They may be more surprised about the group’s trap, dub, and even pop sensibilities. There are euphoric moments of beauty among a landscape of blood-curdling screams, deep industrial grooves, and free-jazz saxophone howls.
Altogether, Lockstep Bloodwar plays like a club night from the bowels of hell. EBM and industrial music fans will find something familiar here but with an outsider twist. Metal fans may, with horror, find themselves wanting to dance.