General Dynamics
Where Animals Play
X-IMG
The styles of the two respective members of General Dynamics (William Maybelline of Lebanon Hanover and Qual, and Emad Dabiri of SARIN and half a dozen other projects, not to mention boss of the X-IMG label) were well established by the time the side-project’s debut, Weaponize Your Dreams, arrived at the tail end of 2022. So much so, in fact, that the record was more of a test case of the pair’s chemistry rather than of what its component parts might sound like. Second LP Where Animals Play carries that forward with another clutch of nasty yet club-ready tunes which triangulates Dabiri and Maybelline’s broad reach of classic post-industrial and brings it to bear with their own flow and aesthetic.
The album’s titular first full track draws most of General Dynamics’ sonic and thematic interests together and distills them into a noxious cask-strength spirit where the Dionysian slaughter of gods sits side by side with samples from old phone sex line ads and taut, pinched, and wormy bass programming. It’s in that combination of Maybelline’s unmistakable voice and lyrics (this is, after all, a man who can effortlessly flip between quoting “American Psycho” and releasing songs with titles like “Rape Me In The Parthenon”) with Dabiri’s yen for VHS kitsch and sleekly produced modern TBM that General Dynamics finds its strengths. Anyone with an interest in classic dark electro or modern EBM should be able to hop aboard Where Animals Play easily, but spend enough time in the swampy stomp of “Something Unnatural” or with the scraping lope of “Creepin’ In” and you’ll see just how effective the duo are in putting their shared interest in the grimiest of 90s material to good use – one can easily imagine them talking shop about yelworC for hours.
In closing out with “Chasing The Scream”, which keeps the record’s noiser and more pained impulses in check for the sake of a speedy cyber-autobahn cruise of nimble, simple arpeggios and icy pads, the structure (and well-edited run-time) of Where Animals Play reads almost like a winking acknowledgement of the ease with which Maybelline and Dabiri’s instincts gel and fit into current club culture. General Dynamics is a project which couldn’t help but sound exactly as it does, and while it’s as idiosyncratic and specific as the extant work of the artists who made it, it’s also primed to inject some vintage toxic sludge into modern club sets.
