Pixel Grip
Percepticide: The Death of Reality
self-released
It’s been a little over four years since Pixel Grip’s breakthrough sophomore album Arena was released, a perfect record for that exact moment in time. The Chicago based-trio’s genre-bending mix of EBM, darkwave, and club music, all served with audacious confidence was the ideal soundtrack for a world just emerging from pandemic restrictions and returning to dancefloors en masse. The lengthy wait for a follow-up record and the band’s growing rep as a live act, mean that 2025’s Percepticide: The Death of Reality has some significant expectations attached to it on arrival.
Perhaps as an acknowledgement of, or in direct defiance of those expectations, the record opens with a track that couldn’t be more different from the buzzing, acerbic posture of Pixel Grip’s signature hits “ALPHAPUSSY” or “Demon Chaser”. Where those songs got over on the basis of attitude and whipsmart rhythm programming, “Crow’s Feast” is a soft, reflective cut that finds vocalist Rita Lukea at her most open, likening heartache and disappointment to being eaten alive, while a tasteful and minimal arrangement of synths plays out behind her. It’s hard not to see it as something of a power move and a statement of purpose in one; we already knew that Lukea and bandmates Tyler Ommen and Jonathon Freund can heat up dancefloors, but opening with an exploration of the emotions behind their sexually-empowered anthems changes up the context for the album significantly. Hence why the already familiar single “I Bet You Do” (originally released in 2023) feels different here, its fuckboy-kiss-off lyrics coloured by the vulnerability that preceded it, but without taking the cutting edge off of its chittering synthlines and snappy drums.
That dichotomy, although not as pronounced in its opening tracks, is at the heart of the record. For every sweaty, bass-forward dancefloor burner like “Stamina” (whose “Daddy come over/Fuck me over and over” hook is as memorable as any PG have ever recorded), there’s a slowburn joint like “Noise” where the band dial it back and rely more on atmospherics and melody as conveyed by ghostly synths and trappy cymbal programming. Most intriguing are the moments where Pixel Grip split the difference between grinding it out and confessional soul-baring; “A Moment With God” is as close to pure synthpunk as the band have ever gotten, its drums and bass guitar rolling along while Lukea flips between a wounded croon and dismissive shout.
Percepticide shows more of Pixel Grip than anticipated, and in ways that fit nicely with the bratty, sexually-liberated, nightlife image they’ve been cultivating up ’til this point. It’s got the bangers you’d expect certainly, supplemented with some emotional sincerity and some of their most developed songwriting to date; a record that explores club life, and the emotional fallout of what happens on and off the dancefloor.
