Heccra's music feels special. Don't get me wrong, all of the music I review I would describe as special in some way. However, Heccra's stuff is really in its own league. His last album The Devil-Faces of My Old Friends, Beneath Me dropped back in 2015, but people are talking about it again because Chillwavve Records pushed a collection of his songs on cassette last year. Which I'm going to say is about dang time. There is something about this album that makes me feel like I need it in my life right now. It's probably because my music diet currently consists of wild binges of hardcore, electronic music and the current wave of emo. Weirdly, Heccra has a finger in each of these pies to varying degrees of depth.
The Devil-Faces of My Old Friends was apparently recorded piecemeal in 2013 while the sole member of the project was in college and working in a seafood restaurant in Algonquin, IL. ...That's a dark place to be in your 20s. And it shows in the music. This album adequately conveys the sense that Heccra is attempting an insane escape attempt of some kind. Like he's trying to force his way through the airholes drilled in a pane of bulletproof glass. He'll either succeed or end up telescoping his spin and causing a stress fracture to his skull: freedom or an extended sojourn in a hospital. His volition has no direct goal and either outcome is welcome.
Tempos, chords and moods, change directions erratically and fitfully, like a bat trying to free itself from a balloon that's been tied around its crinkled ankle as it haplessly drifts upwards, its struggle silhouetted by the moon. Flutes duel and duet with the wild-bite of tooth chipping cries on "The Mint that Grows behind the Dumpster," rebellious sounds that bound over harshly, twinkling guitars, and lay down their lives in strangely explicit scenes for your eyes and ears to behold. Elsewhere, half-shouted melodies pull a fake right turn to tag in an N64 on the appositely willful "Koala Bear." Finally, I'm smitten by the tangerine-tinted post-hardcore intro of "Fox." A track that splashes open like a rat cadaver run over by a bicycle messenger to reveal a winding interior of brash guitar solos of the kind that would make Slash envious, bubbling up alongside translucent death vocals and rattling blast-beats. A garish conflagration that completely unspools to reveal a portal to a sanctuary in an ethereal plane.
Heccra probably had to transact a deal with the devil to get this album out of him, but you won't have to make a parallel promise to enjoy it. Although, you may want to consider signing a few forms in blood in order to make a down payment on a follow-up. I would hold you in very high regard if you made such a sacrifice. I think a lot of people would.
