7/10

With his eagerly-awaited new album 'It’s Called Blood', Seattle’s It Sound (the solo project of Jesse Damm) delivers the audial equivalent of a séance held in a derelict warehouse at 3am. It’s an unfiltered plunge into the darker corners of post-punk, where basslines chug like rusted machinery, guitars screech with ritualistic intent, and every beat lands like a coded transmission from some shadowy parallel city.

Damm channels the electricity of early experimental scenes without falling into imitation. Instead, he distills their spirit into something both familiar and feral. The low-end rumbles with that unmistakable Factory-era cool, while shards of guitar cut through like broken neon. It’s the sound of a mind spelunking its own caverns, dragging back treasures both jagged and strangely luminous.

But what’s most remarkable is how alive this record feels. Lo-fi textures collide with bursts of colour, loops crash into battered drum patterns, and sudden melodic detours flicker into view before dissolving back into the fog. It’s that anarchic, messthetic charm that sees the album constantly shifts between hypnotic midnight grooves and wired urgency, hitting a sweet spot between introspection and abrasion.

Guest appearances from Caithlin DeMarrais (of Rainer Maria) add unexpected texture, bringing a ghostly warmth to 'Likely Just 8', one of the album’s more disorienting tracks, while Damm’s children contribute an eerie sweetness that offsets the record’s heavier atmospheres. Even the dub-leaning remix of 'In Between the Seas', recently featured on Zum Audio Vol. 4, expands the world further, revealing how porous and elastic these songs really are.

'It’s Called Blood' is a triumph of instinct over refinement. It refuses the safety of genre boundaries and instead revels in the glorious mess of noise, repetition, tension, and mood. It’s a post-punk dispatch streaked with colour; a psychedelic shiver; a love letter to the underground that feels thrillingly alive.