(full article via The Atlantic)

There’s a more gleeful take on that idea on Only Love, the bonkers new album by Detroit’s The Armed. Their second album creates the impression of a mosh pit at a carnival, or a building collapsing in glitter, or a sentient bot malfunctioning after its first ever mai tai.

The punishing sound at the heart of many of these songs—hummingbird-fast stammers of rhythm and screams—recalls Converge, the so-called mathcore pioneers whose guitarist produced Only Love. But elsewhere the music recalls pop and indie rock and “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Often, you’re left guessing whether you’re hearing guitar, keyboard, or kazoo.

The total effect is frenzied ecstasy. On the opening one-two onslaught of “Witness” and “Role Models,” for example, the band’s competing firehoses of sound eventually cross streams into one triumphant gush. There are poppier efforts too, like “Fortune’s Daughter,” a slice of death-disco on which the bassist Cara Drolshagen shouts dyspeptically but another vocalist answers with a smooth and catchy chorus. On “Nowhere to Be Found,” the escalatingly tense arrangement of stuttering drums, ghostly vocals, and saxophones suggest what Radiohead might sound like if they were a hardcore band.