Over the past two years, I have found myself gravitating towards music that speaks to the fear and anxiety I have felt on a daily basis throughout the pandemic. One of the bands I keep coming back to is Cloud Rat, a self-described “grindpunk” band from Michigan. On albums such as 2019’s Pollinator, Cloud Rat uses dizzying blast beats, coupled with more experimentally minded interludes, to create an intoxicatingly disorienting aural experience. At their best, the band is exhausting to listen to—which is meant as a compliment.
Photo: Cloud Rat - Bandcamp
Cloud Rat
Cloud Rat
This balance between aggression and something more complicated is perfected on “Mother Tongue/Glitter Belly,” the band’s recent single, released through the Adult Swim Singles Series in June 2021. “Mother Tongue,” with lyrics alluding to “A hex leading to a suffocating drought” and “Coffin chest pain” seems tailor-made for the COVID-19 era. Yet it’s “Glitter Belly” that makes me excited about what comes next for Cloud Rat. By the middle of the track, the band is essentially deconstructing the song, tearing out all remnants of traditional instrumentation until all that is left is a steady drumbeat and a swirl of electronic sounds. Here, the stark contrast between the sheer noise of the track’s earlier moments and the relative calm of the song’s ending further stokes the feeling of uncertainty that Cloud Rat excels in capturing.
Some of this willingness to experiment may have come from the conditions created by the pandemic. As drummer Brandon Hill explains, “the writing process for what music we did manage to record last year was a wild one.” Having spent a good portion of their career already living hours from each other, Hill—along with fellow Cloud Rat members Rorik Brooks and Madison Marshall—decided to find freedom in the even greater distance that COVID-19 created between band members. This space, both physical and intellectual, allowed the band, in the words of Hill, to “lean into stretching our more into the weirdness of things.” To Hill, the inability to exist as a band in any traditional sense forced Cloud Rat “to turn back to our DIY origins a bit—which perhaps influences the creative atmosphere?”
Global Panic
That being said, the band does not see the pandemic as any sort of blessing. “Quite simply put,” notes Hill, “it sucks.” For a band whose lyrics trade in intense pessimism about humanity, the global spread of COVID-19 was far from shocking. “If anything,” explains Hill, “I just personally find myself saying ‘I hate it when I’m right’.” Yet music can serve as a way to document the conditions associated with something like a pandemic that many choose to overlook. For Hill, “the human race has shown its true colors for generations, but never before with such globally unified interconnectivity, panic, misinformation, confusion, insanity, greed, etcetera—all under the electronic magnifying glass of social media and hyper-globalism. The world and its state speak for itself.”
Thankfully, the band still sees a need to document such a world. The band is currently wrapping up a new record, featuring—according to Hill—their “most challenging and intense material yet.” And a spirit of exploration is guiding this writing process.
When asked for any final thoughts, Hill offers, “All one can say is commit to the void, never stop searching for sounds within sounds. New sonic cerebral territories are everywhere, [and] there is always something new to be learned every day.” One couldn’t ask for better advice during these troubled times.
Cloud Rat perform with Northless, Closet Witch, LIFES, and Ballstomper at the Cactus Club on March 11.
