Rating: -3
Anybody with a smidgen of foresight might have come to the conclusion ages ago that a group of teenage Swedes, hopped off on codeine and zombie-marching (complimentary) through the snow, almost single-handedly carving out a new direction for sound totally full of childish wonder were always going to lose their mojo once the party ended and they had to worry about grown up shit. Yung Lean has been off base for a bit, 2018’s Poison Ivy was the last thing of note he put out. 2025’s Jonatan was an indicator of a dreadful turn for Leandoer & his capture by the corporate cul-de-sac was really cemented for me when I watched him come out to a Laneway stage with AI Dragonball-Style grok graphics as the backing visual.
Bladee’s new album Sulphur Surfer continues the Drain-Gang/Sad Boys orbit’s trend of entropy. Songs meander and the lyrics are caught in this awkward space where Bladee is flirting with his neopaganist tiktok slideshow occult fascinations while also trying to keep to the Sugoi Kawaii childishness of earlier projects. It features Current 93’s David Tibet. Tibet himself is a good example of someone not leaving the football before it leaves him. As Current 93 as a project went on, it lost the childish playfulness and started chasing its own tail. Tibet never learned to sing on-key because he was too busy trying to learn magic (serious) which is endearing when you’re like 22 but David’s 66 and still zombie-marching in a swamp of reactionary woo-woo (derogatory) and Bladee’s burgeoning dedication to the occult at the ripe age of 32 is a big flashing warning sign that Benjamin Reichwald is getting washed out and up upon the beach, I think. The crux of it is that there’s nothing new here. There’s suggestions to a new aesthetic direction but it’s just clothing. Horrorcore groups out of Memphis were straight up practicing necromancy and embedding the souls of murder victims into their mix-tapes and they created art with real sinister sonic textures that cleave right through the lackadaisical gesturing of Bladee & Tibet on Sulphur Surfer.
