INTRODUCING: Thotcrime
Fresh innovation on a second record is notoriously a hill to climb for most bands. When you’re already a band that’s defied genre and convention, that might feel like a harder pressure still. We caught up with producer K. Salmon and guitarist Malady Jane from the exciting THOTCRIME about their second record, D1G1T4L_DR1FT, their uncategorised style and the evolution of the band.
The four piece have made striking leaps in what production, energy and musical exploration can produce. Their first record ønyøurcømputer was released in 2020 and turned plenty of heads. With their second album, THOTCRIME have made even more headway to creating some authentic, chaotically charged music.
“I feel like we wanted to go in on the genre exploration on the first album but that, maybe, we weren’t so familiar with each other’s’ writing styles,” K says. “To a degree, the first album also fell into the trap of ‘genre’ where we were like ‘we’ll make an electronic hardcore/cybergrind/mathcore group’ and it was fun. But after exploring more in the splits, we’ve grown a lot more accustomed to seeking out new sounds we love to throw in. You know you’re onto a winner when a black metal section gives way to a bouncy djent part that evolves into brostep and you never stop gurning.”
THOTCRIME have also managed to produce their music across the ocean, with members spread between Champaign-Urbana and Philadelphia in the US and Nottingham, UK. “There are positives and downsides,” Malady tells us about the way the band operate. “Obviously being able to create music without having to be physically in the same room frees us up to work on writing and recording almost any time the mood strikes. It also makes it easier to bring in collaborators, since they can record from wherever they’re located as long as they can give us professional-sounding takes. But on the flipside, things a typical band might take for granted like performing live have taken a lot of thinking outside the box for us to figure out how to do.”
K also notes, “we also don’t get to just chill out and chat and discuss things in real time as often as a lot of bands. There are times where, I think we all feel, we don’t communicate as much as we’d like. There’s a lot to be said for actually being able to hang out with your friends.”
A big draw is that THOTCRIME are hard to put in a box. But not only do they play hard and heavy, but they pack a huge amount of snarl, snark and razor-sharp observations into tracks that can run just over a minute or two. That’s more to do with the fact the band have really come to understand each other more as a team and as creative individuals. “I think part of that has to do with Dot (drums) and Hayley (vocals) making more contributions, in addition to the way our sound naturally evolved. With the previous record Hayley had come in after most of the instrumentals were already written, so she was just adding vocals to the tracks. Since then, she’s been getting more involved in producing and writing, and Dot joining the group has really improved our drum writing in a big way.”
With two albums released in a short time, the four piece have a clear drive and a passion for what they’re doing. However, a second record is always a different beast to the first, and can be a double-edged sword, swapping inexperience for time constrains and external pressure.
“In some ways it was similar to what we did for our previous album, ønyøurcømputer, in others it was very different,” Malady agrees. “For me, at times I had been feeling a great deal of pressure to craft a worthy follow-up to our debut, but I tried to let that feeling go and just have fun with the writing/recording. It was also our first time working under a hard deadline, which added a bit of pressure. I think we were all relieved once we’d handed in the final masters.”
“In some ways it was a lot more relaxed,” K points out in contrast. “On the first record, we got one song done and then suddenly, we were all hyper energised and recorded all the live elements and put the album together in like two weeks. This time, we had a bunch of stuff written before we even thought about an album. Central Dogma has been kicking around for a while. But having a much wider spread of guests and people having jobs that we have to work around made things get a bit hectic towards the end. Like Malady says, we all felt like this weight had been lifted when it was all done though, having a deadline makes it feel a lot more immediate.”
D1G1T4L_DR1FT is out now via Prosthetic Records
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