There’s a brief scene in Alfonso Cuarón’s still-terrifying dystopian masterpiece Children of Men where Jasper (Michael Caine) and Theo (Clive Owen) take advantage of a small break in the onslaught of horrors to smoke pot and hang out. Jasper suggests “a little zen music” before pressing play on a track created specifically for this scene: an aggressively off-kilter Aphex Twin beat remixed with the anguished screams of a man being tortured.
What does an almost throwaway bit of world-building from a 2006 sci-fi film have to do with Ben Quad’s latest EP, Ephemera, which doesn’t even really sound like this “zen music”? Cuarón’s unfortunately prescient film (set in 2027, btw) introduces a world where optimism is dead, human life is stripped of whatever meaning it once seemed to have, and the music people make to cope has grown increasingly violent and angry in response.
Half as long as Ben Quad’s stellar 2022 debut I’m Scared That’s All There Is but hitting at least twice as hard, 11-minute Ephemera, released in October, most obviously finds the Oklahoma City four-piece going from emo to screamo, but below the surface, there seems to be something deeper and darker happening beyond one of the state’s best rock bands moving into an adjacent subgenre.
The first few seconds of opener “I Did Not Create the Rules,” head-fake toward a more drastic change still, with glossy synths and drum machines that would sound at home on an Emeralds album, but a distorted guitar riff immediately erases any idea that Ben Quad has gone techno. This wrong-foot rug-pull is worth noting, however, because it’s probably the closest thing to a joke on an album by a band that filled its debut with references to cartoons and sitcoms.
“It’ll be like this forever / Always lost, confused,” the song begins with a scream that instantly reminds listeners that “emo” is short for “emotional” and unbridled rage is most definitely an emotion. Fans of lead singer and rhythm guitarist Sam Wegrzynski’s clean vocals shouldn’t worry — they’re not completely absent from the album — but they might fear for the health of his vocal chords as he and bassist Henry Shields exchange throat-shredding screams at least as often as they harmonize. “We’re living anxiously, so why don’t we just burn this?” the song asks. “We’re living anxiously, so how did we deserve this?” In an interview with Brooklyn Vegan in October, the band said “I Did Not Create the Rules” is a response to being “forced to survive in the constant hell cycle that is late-stage capitalism,” and the pointed anger is audible and cathartic.
“You’ll Get Nothing and Like It” continues the theme, concluding “Everything I need from you is everything you take from me / Every single little thing will add up ’til it dies with me.” Where I’m Scared That’s All There Is might have had a sample from Always Sunny in Philadelphia, this song simply features a voice speaking the line, “You were made to throw away,” introducing the idea that will become the refrain of Ephemera’s concluding title track.
“Lyrically, this EP has a lot to do with the current political climate,” lead guitarist Edgar Viveros said in the press release accompanying the album. “How am I supposed to survive in this world that doesn’t care for me?” Viveros’ immaculately played mathy noodling and tapping, which formerly stood out as the knotty spine in Ben Quad songs, is also an essential element of Ephemera, as evident on the single “Your Face as an Effigy,” but drummer Isaac Young’s hard-hitting blast beats are at least as much of a driving force.
Outline in Color guitarist CJ Cochran, who produced I’m Scared That’s All There Is, returns behind the boards, and Ephemera, Ben Quad’s first release for the Pure Noise label (Drug Church, Knocked Loose) really represents a logical if aggressive evolution of the band’s sound and approach rather than an outright reinvention. Between its Simpsons’ referencing title and King of the Hill sample, for example, I’m Scared’s “You Gotta Learn to Listen Lou,” analyzes a dying relationship with excoriating introspection where lesser emos would whine and fingerpoint, and album closer “Joan of Hill” foreshadows Ephemera by decrying misery-inflicting landlords before stating “Throw me away / It was always my fate.”
Ephemera’s title track, meanwhile, makes the political personal, declaring “I watched you ruin everything … stuck inside the mess you made / Spill me open and see my future / Leave me here to clean my sutures.” The despair of the discarded becomes rage, and Ben Quad, who once made soundtracks for late-night longing, is now making music for watching the world burn.
This article appears in Stitt’s Top Ten.