This Place Is Designed To Kill Us

Black Dresses “Death/Bad Girl”

Black Dresses’ sound is a collision of harsh industrial rock and sassy electroclash, two adjacent genre aesthetics that didn’t crossover nearly as much as they should have back in the day. But here it is, and it sounds incredibly fresh – my first thought upon hearing “Death/Bad Girls” was basically, “why did people ever stop doing this?” The timing feels right, though. The boldness of this music is in stark contrast with a music ecosystem overwhelmingly dominated by low-key sadness, drab aesthetics, and comatose rhythms. This sound is like a splash of color and the slash of a knife, and the vocals nail a perfect balance of aggression, dark humor, and introspection. “Death/Bad Girls” moves through a four distinct phases in four minutes – I’m most fond of the heaviest and most abrasive bits, but the outro section in which they get more philosophical and emotionally vulnerable is where they really pull it all back and show you what they’re really on about.

Buy it from Bandcamp.