#+TITLE: Death Cult (album review)
#+AUTHOR: Jessica B. Kelly & The Void Conspiracy
I mistakenly received a full album code as a preview to Jessica
B. Kelly And The Void Conspiracy's first release, Death Cult. You may
have caught the first 20 seconds at the end of the Lispy Gopher Show
on September 27th '23.

Jessica's signature heavy music is now a regular meal for my ears.

Death Cult's first four tracks
|------------------------|
| the titular Death Cult |
| LD 99                  |
| They Want You Dead     |
| No Gods, No Masters    |
|------------------------|
are linked thematically by rejection of cruel and cynical orthodoxies
and held together by an exploration of matching form: I see half of
each track as being held together by Jessica's growling poetry over
shredding guitar - and she's no mere rhymster!
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Now I might be alone in making this connection, but the dark and lingering poetic            |
| mental health conveyance put me in mind of Fischer Z (Word Salad, Red Skies Over Paradise..) |
| except John Watts lacks Jessica's shredding and dusky cant. LD 99 particularly. Somehow.     |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
accented by electric and melodic flourishes. For the other halves of
the tracks, the poetry is a melodic and instrumental complement of the
vocal half.
|--------------------------------------+----------------------------|
| Core Mastodons                       | Void Conspiracy            |
|--------------------------------------+----------------------------|
| @NegativeOhio@queer.party            | drum sequency & production |
| @venya@musicians.today               | bass                       |
| @jessica@mastodon.voidconspiracy.com | guitars, lyrics, vocals    |
|--------------------------------------+----------------------------|
So far as criticism, since this is the first album by this group, they
produced four monster truck hit tracks along the same concept, but
each track could really be the hit track of its own album, so while
connected thematically and stylistically I don't think the edges of
the tracks transition into each other. I expect this is because the
group of the energy of artists Jessica brought together for the first
time pumped out several albums worth of power squeezed into their
first album collaboration.

And we didn't get to track 5 yet! Centred around mixed samplings of
Jessica's growled cant from Death Cult, electronic ghost spirits
flitting around the void conspiracy take turns building fantastic
electro-melodic visions of the title track. An electronic death
Mozart's 12 Variations on Ah Vous Dirai-je Maman. If Mozart had been
the conspiracy of
|---------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------|
| Death Cult (C2 vs. Control.org Mix)                     |                           |
| Death Cult (Blood Zealot Mix)                           |                           |
| Death Cult (Eschatology Mix) [feat. Skin Contact]       | @fstateaudio@sdf.org      |
| Death Cult (Audio Nightmare Mix) [feat. Nightmare Lyre] | @NegativeOhio@queer.party |
| Death Cult (Country version) [feat. Mykie Frankenstein] | @mykie@musicians.today    |
| Death Cult (Dance of Death Mix)                         |                           |
| Death Cult (Burning Vatican Mix) [feat. Traiken]        | @traiken@mastodon.social  |
|---------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------|
finally
|-----------------------------|
| Salvation (Anti-Gospel Mix) |
|-----------------------------|
A web post by Jessica:
|-------------------------------|
| [[jessicabkelly.com/2023/09/28/]] |
|-------------------------------|