Caustic
Fiend II
self-released
After a seven year layoff Matt Fanale’s doubled up production as Caustic, though the long-running Wisconsin producer’s opted for a thematic division between his two new LPs. The more downcast companion to Fiend I, Fiend II arrives a month after its predecessor. While the material found on Fiend II isn’t without precedent in the Caustic back catalog, its focused presentation here allows for latent elements within Fanale’s work to be mulled over more intensively.
As mentioned above, Fiend II is pitched as “the ‘depressive’ to the ‘manic’ of Fiend I“, and for all of the noisy club jams that likely come to mind when Caustic is mentioned, Fanale’s never balked at getting moody or introspective. It’s worth noting that despite that melancholy mood the record’s less focused on Fanale’s history with substance abuse than some earlier records which dealt with personal demons…or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Fiend II positions substance abuse and the thrills and pitfalls inherent to it as part of a larger psychological and emotional portrait. Pieces like “Fiend For The” and “Survive Myself, Despite Myself” are much more focused on the mentality which leads to a trail of vomit than they are the pangs of regret at discovering one the morning after. That isn’t to say that Fiend II is just a document of someone else’s productive therapy session – “Pure Abyss” is nothing more and nothing less than Fanale enumerating every perceived personal flaw which leads him to repeatedly mutter “fuck everything about me” in a tone of voice many listeners will have heard in their own heads plenty of times.
Musically, Fiend II finds a downtempo pocket that matches up with the mindfucks and long stares in the mirror of its lyrical themes. But much like those themes, the sonic palette on display here is familiar territory for Fanale, who’s long had a yen for linking dub, breakbeat, and trip-hop influences to his lo-fi industrial rootkit. Scorn-like bass frequencies and distorted stabs weave though the half industrial, half trip-hop beats of “Buggy”, while “Crazy Gloo” recalls Witchman’s industrialized jungle breaks. We’ve had plenty of forays into this territory from Caustic (“Gravity Bong” from 2015’s Industrial Music comes to mind), but Fiend II‘s extended stay in it allows for slight variances from it, like Logan Turner of Cygnet’s turn on the wounded “Every Time I Failed You”, to pop.
Replicating the timing of some heavy mood swings? Wanting to avoid Guns N’ Roses comparisons? Aiming for twice as much ink from scribes like us? We’re not entirely sure of the plan behind releasing each of the Fiend releases a month apart, but we can say that from a listener’s perspective the time apart’s allowed for each to feel like a sustained and self-contained exploration of two distinct frames of mind and mood without needing to lean on the other.
