Lip Critic – Hex Dealer | Album Review
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Partisan Records
> It is a Friday afternoon in May of 2024. Summer has yet to begin officially, yet the sun is punishingly bright as it tries to burst through the shuttered blinds of my home. I have attempted to counteract the blistering heat that awaits outside by running the a/c unit of my apartment into overdrive, yet it does not seem to be working: my insides are cooking. I am approximately eight minutes and twelve seconds into the thirty-one-minute runtime of Lip Critic’s debut LP Hex Dealer, and something is happening. > My heartbeat has gradually increased as each minute ticks by. I first noticed this reaction precisely four minutes and twenty-three seconds into this listening session, around the closing point of the opening track “It’s The Magic,” when I began to experience shortness of breath and a slight blurring in my vision. There is something living in this album. There is something simultaneously familiar and refreshingly new to a record like this, always the surest sign a band has at least the potential to become interesting if they are not right out of the gate. Lip Critic need not worry about the potential of being interesting; they sprinted right past potential quite a while ago with a series of EPs and singles dating back to 2019. Hex Dealer is, in many ways, the ideal form of a debut LP: it is a record that’s overflowing with ideas both musically and lyrically, the unmistakable sign of a band that’s spent years experimenting as they build up the anticipation for what a fully realized album by them could sound like. Now, Hex Dealer is here, ready to punish all who dare delve into Lip Critic’s world.
> By the third song, my nose has started to bleed. It’s a slight drip, like an old faucet that won’t stop. I can feel my brain pulsating against my skull. It is trying to escape. There is no escape.All that time I waited
Just to find out I’m from hell
I burn right through
My mortal shell
> It appears I blacked out shortly after my last audio log. The nose bleeding has intensified. Some minor cuts and scrapes have developed on my scalp. I can’t feel them, but I know they are there. I am going to attempt to continue from where I passed out before. What to say about a track like “Bork Pelly”? This is the first of two tracks on the record to feature guest verses from other vocalists (in this case, those guests would be GHÖSH and ID.Sus) and also the sort of track that is going to grab the inevitable, and frankly lazy, comparison to Death Grips. Why is it any time a punk band that draws just as much from hip-hop and dance music must always be compared to those titans of trolling? They certainly weren’t the first group to marry that cadre of sounds together. Is it just that they were the first to quote-unquote “breakthrough” to the mainstream? The first band of this ilk to get Pitchfork coverage and major festival slots? Probably. Almost certainly. But there is such a slice-of-life playfulness, not just to a track like “Bork Pelly,” but to all of the output from Lip Critic up until this point, that their sonic forebearers have seriously lacked. Sure, this album is populated with grimy, intense, breakneck-paced songs, but it is also a truly funny and engaging album.
> There is a warbling synth embedded in the track “Spirit Bomber” that has shifted my pre-existing nausea into full-on illness. The way the notes gurgle has sent my brain into convulsions, though my body is completely still, paralyzed in fact. I am lying here on the floor of my bathroom, incapable of vomiting, but at this moment, for the first time in my life, there is nothing I would love to be able to do nothing more right now than just that. I can feel my organs shifting inside me.> 47 seconds into “Death Lurking, one of the cuts on the back of my scalp has developed into a larger wound, though it does not hurt in the slightest. In fact, it feels nice to touch. > The high-pitched, scraping synth on “I’m Alive” feels akin to white noise, but if it physically hurt to listen to. I have pulled a small (about 3” in length and thin in diameter) bit of what appears to be wire out of the large unfeeling wound on the back of my head. It is covered in a viscous black goo that smells and tastes of nothing.
> The death metal-adjacent growl of “My Wife and the Goblin” feels like a moment of relief from the abuse my brain and body have endured until this point. The bleeding from my nose has stopped. I have continued to pull more frayed bits of wire of varying lengths from my headwound. > I have lost a tooth. My body feels like static. The pulse of album closer “Toxin Dodger” has given me the sweet release of vomit purging from my body. It is similar to the black goo that coated the bit of wire I pulled from my head wound. I can now feel bits of wire protruding through the skin on my palms and fingers. There is little of me left how I was before. My body and mind are not what they were. I pick at the wound on my head. It has gotten significantly larger. I can fit almost my whole hand in there. My entire body tingles with static as I pry and feel around gently.
> There it is. The wire from where all of these bits I have pulled seemed to have originated from. It’s hefty feeling and causes my legs to spasm and pulsate when I grasp on it. I pull on the large wire that appears to be stuck to my brainstem. I tug at it ever so slightly as more and more unspools from the wound in my head. It feels good…> It feels good. Jack Nelson is a writer, bartender, and former stand-up comedian (don’t hold that last part against him) based in Wilmington, NC. He can be found on Instagram and Letterboxd as @itsjackiekeyes. You will soon be able to see him in the upcoming mockumentary Soda Pop Spencer Storms Atlanta. All updates on that and future film projects can be found on the IG for the production company @punisher_skull.jpg.
