‘Twas the night ’fore tomorrow, world leaders convened,
Each vying for patents on powers unseen.
With treaties half-written and handshakes half-shook,
They plotted dominion over resources untook.
Anomaly Report have been at this since 1982, which means they’ve outlasted hairstyles, hard drives, and several apocalypses that were supposed to arrive by now. Forged in the basements and backrooms of Chicago’s hardcore fringe, they’ve grown into a many-headed creature with a taste for bass, brass, and bad news. They call it “brutalist neo-Soviet insomnia rock.” We hear music for people who read the headlines – and then bite the paper.
The bass leads the charge now, horns barging in like bureaucrats with brass knuckles. There’s a whiff of late-’80s experimental noise rock in the feral howls, and the dry-eyed sneer of contemporary post-punk agitators: Viagra Boys and IDLES come to mind. Somewhere in the scaffolding, you also catch echoes of The Wolfgang Press, Crime and the City Solution, and Foetus, those elegant merchants of unease who always knew how to make ugliness feel oddly refined.
Beautiful Terrible Things, their fifth full-length since 2020, stomps in with a barnyard panic. There’s a Snake in the Barn turns rural paranoia into a revival meeting gone rabid. Pitchforks flash, prayer circles spin, there’s a moo here and there – and then somebody suggests arson. The joke curdles fast. Fear spreads quicker than facts, and by the end, you’re eyeing your own hayloft. Wicked slinks through betrayal with a grin that shows too many teeth. Seduction curdles into self-recognition. By sunrise, corruption feels contagious. It’s a mean little mirror, and it laughs when you look. After this we hear a spoken word interlude in Dædalus’ Folly, musing about the modern ways we’re moving too close to the sun with our own creations: the machines.
Then comes Hey, Satan!: a stompy, lurching track that serves as part vaudeville routine, part therapy session. The devil shows up in nice shoes. The singer chats him up like an old drinking buddy, only to realize the real rascal is self-sabotage in a slick jacket. It’s funny; it’s uncomfortable, it’s the kind of song that winks while picking your pocket. Prick is two minutes of glorious self-indictment with a killer horn section. Immaturity is paraded proudly, admitting manipulation with a shrug. Beneath the bluster sits a plea: tell me I’m wrong. I Kissed the Devil stretches out with a sinister piano bassline, swaying between temptation and recoil. Regret hangs in the air like cheap cologne. Somebody pours another glass at the edge of the world – and you can feel the bruise forming before the punch lands.
Side two spirals inward and outward at once. I Ain’t Over It (Beautiful Terrible Mix) loops regret in this remix from their previous album. My Anxiety stalks the bedroom at 3 a.m., alarm bells ringing in an empty house as it channels Tom Waits. Identity feels ill-fitting; the mind runs marathons with no finish line. The title track, Beautiful Terrible Things, widens the lens: tenderness and destruction share a zip code; underestimation becomes fuel. It’s a thesis disguised as a threat.
The Night Before Tomorrow might be the record’s bleakest laugh: leaders toast progress. Scientists scheme. Investors sing. One lone voice mutters, “We’re making a terrible mistake.” Nobody listens. Of course they don’t.
And then, a crooked grin at the curtain call: Here’s to Forgetting staggers in like a tipsy cabaret number. “Here’s To Forgetting was the first track we wrote for the LP,” says Durak Polezny. “It was a response to some personal tragedies we’d experienced recently, but where God Laughs addressed those same events with anger, Here’s to Forgetting uses humour to laugh through the pain.”
Beautiful Terrible Things by Anomaly Report
“Beautiful Terrible Things is about more than that,” Polezny continues. “It’s about everything going on around us in the world right now – the rush to incorporate artificial intelligence into our lives, the rampant violence, and increasing stupidity – and it’s about how we, as artists, respond to it.”
They respond with noise, nerve, and a raised glass. Play it loud. Play it twice.
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The post “History Repeats. Who Hears?” — Chicago’s Anomaly Report Chronicles Collapse on “Beautiful Terrible Things” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
