A race to nowhere

24 Aug, 2023

I never thought I'd fall in love with a band like The Armed. They feel LOUD – louder than anything else I've heard – and when I first listened to them, with their chaotic wall of guitar squeals, screams, shouts, and frenetic drums, they were the most sonically confronting and challenging band I'd heard in a long time. They still are.

I remember how I stumbled upon them: about two years ago, music journalist Ian Cohen shared the video for their 2021 single, 'All Futures'.

I was immediately hooked.

I didn't know bands like this existed. They had no official line-up – different members appeared in different videos, some used fake names. Band members lifted weights and deliberately put on muscle to embody the full maximalist force of their music (they gave interviews on their workout plans and diets). There was a strange website developed as if the band were heading up a religion. And the devoted fans – well, what kind of fans, unbeknownst to the band themselves, choose to create and fund a billboard in Times Square?

Exploring The Armed's music wasn't easy for me. 'All Futures' appears on their 2021 album, Ultrapop, which was criticised by some for its compressed and dense mix. Initially to my ear, everything felt convoluted and difficult to parse. For the longest time, I'd listen to the album and skip songs that felt overwhelming or too difficult. Slowly but surely, however, I'd hear something new that would pull me in a little deeper each time. Something would sonically shift from feeling abrasive to being intriguing, curious, and almost a little gentler. A little hook here, a little nudge into heavier sounds there. All ultimately leading to a conviction that these are some of the best songs I've ever heard. Finally over two years later, I feel like I get it. The deliberate artistic choices I struggled with make sense. Even now it remains a continuous gift, with each listen revealing more to me – another bassline I hadn't properly noticed, or a drum fill I'd not fully appreciated. And put together, these parts cohere into a beautiful, chaotic, full-on musical assault.

When the album was first released, people talked about the band playing with pop hooks in their songs. For a stranger like me, stepping into uncharted lands, I almost thought they were pulling my leg. How could anything resembling pop exist here in this dark, dense, heavy sound? But like those basslines, the drums, the melodies in the screams, I can hear the pop hooks now too.

This probably reads like some kind of musical Stockholm syndrome. Listen to something enough, and of course you'll learn to love it. I just don't know if that's it though.

Late 2021, amidst global lockdowns, the band announced a live-streamed performance: ULTRAPOP: Live at the Masonic. Ticketed screenings were scheduled online for people to watch the film, with various songs performed inside the huge, almost other-worldly Masonic Temple of Detroit.

As someone still new to the band and their historical lore, Live at the Masonic was, just like Ultrapop itself, challenging – and it pushed the edges of what I enjoyed listening to. On first viewing, visually, narratively, it felt like a work of art. But musically, recognisable singles stuck with me, and other songs seemed to pass me by. Over a year later, viewing it again, I see the whole thing as a masterpiece.

Something pulled me into The Armed. Something kept me coming back for reasons I still can't explain. And whatever that something is, it has stuck around. I'm a fan, through and through.

I sometimes think about what it feels like for me to listen to heavy music. In the past, listening to artists like Alexisonfire, I found myself drawn to the melodic reprieves between screams. These almost acted like a pressure valve. Brace for the heavy bits, relax in the moments between. The Armed is different.

Listening to The Armed is an exercise in relaxation and flow. It reminds me of the idea of equanimity. In the words of meditation teacher and author Jeff Warren, equanimity is:

"the skill of opening, of non-interference with moment-to-moment sensory experience."

Or put another way:

"Equanimity is the capacity to let your experience be what it is, without trying to fight it and negotiate with it. It’s like an inner smoothness or frictionlessness.”

We can think of it as partly defined by its opposition. In the words of Shinzen Young, equanimity is not "suppression":

"Suppression – A (internal or external) sensory experience arises and we attempt to cope with it by stuffing it down, denying it, tightening around it, etc."

When I first started listening to The Armed, I'd find myself bracing for the impact of the heavy chaos. I'd tighten around it and suppress it. I'd resist it in my listening.

Falling in love with The Armed has been a process of learning to bring equanimity and relaxation to the listening experience. Paradoxically, relaxing around the music that felt difficult or sharp or at times uncomfortable, has only made it less difficult, sharp, and uncomfortable, and allowed new musical qualities to emerge. It's only been by relaxing, by not tightening around the music, that the flow of the songs – and the flow of my experience while listening – has loosened and been made "frictionless". By building the capacity (and skill) of not-interfering with the listening experience itself, but letting it flow through me, I've been able to begin hearing the things I now hear in these strange, wonderful, moving songs. The music emerges and reveals itself. And what an unexpected joy it's been.

Please don't read this as me trying to convince you to love The Armed like I do. You may not.

But on the eve of them releasing their newest album, Perfect Saviors, which sees them shifting away from heavy abrasion into a smoother, but no-less detailed and subversive arena-ready sound – I wanted to try and capture exactly what this band has moved in me and why they feel so important.

The Armed have helped my intuition and curiosity lead me into challenging music. Something kept calling me back to them again and again – against all logic, it told me to keep listening. It challenged me to listen differently. And not every difficult piece of music has this impact on me. The Armed drew me in, step by step, into their strange, beautiful, and consistently rewarding world. My listening forever indebted, my self forever grateful.

When you hear your own intuition challenging you, I encourage you to listen to it in the same way.

Curious about Perfect Saviors?

It's out Friday August 25. Check out the singles so far below. This is a shift in sound for The Armed, and it's my most anticipated album of the year.

#Live at the Masonic #Perfect Saviors #The Armed #Ultrapop #hardcore #my writing