Dripping – Disintegration of Thought Patterns During a Synthetic Mind Traveling Bliss

You might have noticed during my last Crypts article that the score was missing.¹ Indeed, it was an executive decision by me to get rid of scores for Crypts articles from now on. And while the tech team scrambles² in the background to make this executive decision work on the site, let me elaborate on why. First of all, Crypts articles are, by design, about something we deem “good”, thus making the score redundant. Does it really matter if the chosen album is a 7, 8, or 9? It does not, really, but what matters is that the album is rather unknown and worthy of your time. Which brings me to my second point: things can be worthy of your time without being all that great, strictly speaking. Some things are worth experiencing despite a middling score, whether it be because they’re unique, only held back by certain small flaws, or just plain weird. Or, like today’s specimen, all three.

Dripping are a true oddity. Starting out under the name Cadaverment as a relatively straightforward brutal death metal act, Dripping soon ditched the classic assortment of guts, gore and, grime for something more outlandish. Coining the term New Jersey Drug Metal for their odd concoction and slapping what might be the first cosmic butthole on the cover, not only are different from your usual early 2000s slam act, they want you to know that they are different right off the bat. Disintegration of Thought Patterns During a Synthetic Mind Traveling Bliss is a concept album, even if I cannot quite discern the concept. Does the title hint at a drug trip, perhaps? The songs are organized as chapters and, taken together, form a single 21 minute song. We might call this progressive — and truth be told, I’ve seen stupider things being sold under that general umbrella — but honestly, it just devolves into an assortment of gimmicky transitions, strange samples and clashing musical elements immediately.

And if I say clashing, that is absolutely what I mean. Other musical genres will get teased for a few seconds — there might be ambient synths, for example, soothing you into a lo-fi lull before heavily compressed and raw slams jerk you out of it. A sample from classical music, vocals and all, will play and suggest meaning where there is none. Suddenly, Dripping will start playing seemingly unrelated material below it. There are a few hip hop beats on here, rapping — if I did not hallucinate — getting a contact high from the album massaging my eardrums. And, once again, the slams just cut in and annihilate those very same eardrums. Yet, I cannot deny that there is something to Dripping. These musicians do not know what they’re doing, but raw talent seeps through at every corner. I do think the brutal death metal bits are quite good, even if there is no rhyme or reason to their arrangement. The vocals are deranged, unhinged, and completely unhuman. Even the elements plucked from other genres out of pure gimmickry are well done, even if, again, there does not seem to be much logic as to how they’re arranged. At some point, I gave up trying to understand and just went with the flow. Disintegration of Thought Patterns During a Synthetic Mind Traveling Bliss is an odd specimen. I do not understand it and I can therefore not give it a score.³ But you should listen to it, nonetheless.

1. One of these days this will all make sense – Editor ↩︎
2. Our Carbonated Overlords have made some severe budget cuts, but we will persevere. – Editor ↩︎
3. Pay no mind to what the number below is. – Editor ↩︎