Review Summary: It’s Like You’re Watching Yourself Watch Yourself
Predator or prey, this is the dichotomy of human existence. There are those that inflict pain and there are those that hurt and nowhere is this better represented than on Crippling Alcholism’s debut “When The Drugs That Make You Sick Are The Drugs That Make You Better”, a voyeuristic 8 track epic about the gratuitous exploitation we ignore everyday. Helmed by Nursing’s Tony Castrato and Horse Torso’s Danny Sher, the duo explore these themes by seamlessly interweaving Mathcore and Jazz with more traditional Goth and Post punk textures. This works as a backdrop for storytelling, utilizing their diverse array of influences to sequence each track into a foreboding and ominous vignette. Every song is a different angle of the same revelation: We are the predator and the prey, rendered too helpless to entirely dismiss either.
From album opener “Beloved”, we are tossed into Crippling Alcholism’s synth drenched world of struggle and subjugation. It is here we are introduced to the record’s manifesto: “ The worst of us live forever, while the kindest souls are swallowed whole”. Eerie escalating guitar layers give way to a distorted crescendo before melting into a dancey post punk conclusion. Here castrato croons “You don’t have to live if you don’t want to live/You don’t have to die if you don’t want to die” as a playful rebuke of existing under the album’s imposed plurality only thinly veiled by worldly distractions. Maybe we think we continue to exist for love, where in “Beloved” our narrator only exists to ease a lover through a tortuous existence, or in the sinister “Group Home” where a man’s skin is cut off for robbing the narrator of someone they love. Regardless it’s clear that some will thrive in cruelty and those that don’t will unwittingly contribute to it such as in “Slumber Party” where the narrator realizes he gets off to degrading and violent pornography or in “Your Body As A Gulag” where a schizophrenic fantasizes about committing gun violence. The album’s climax is the deceptively subdued “Please Stop Hurting Me, I’ll Tell You Anything” where the vocalist warns of how the human soul is made malleable through pain (illustrated with examples of cartel/government torture) and how that malleability is “only human”. Every song, despite its disturbing and graphic content, is broken up or ended with a cathartically beautiful guitar/synth passage to act as some sort of morbid palate cleanser. The prettiest moment is on the album closer “Hungry Time” where needle-like guitars and primal drum fills fade into trancelike pads introducing a brief moment of nihilistic peace. Although formulaic, these tonal shifts work to Crippling Alcoholism’s favor since their sound is so unique.
In conclusion, it would’ve been hard to talk about the band’s sound without each song’s personal narrative. Similar to Daughters, Swans, or Nick Cave “Crippling Alcoholism” are making very unique and lyrically driven music and the genre/instrumentals only serve to assist. I can’t say I’ve heard anything quite like “When The Drugs That Make You Better Are The Drugs That Make You Sick” and despite the album’s rare occasional ambient lull I’d say it’s proudly espoused darkness demands your full attention, love it or hate it.
