DISCOGRAPHY
Eldritch (2014) 6/10
Uncanny Valley (2017) 8/10 +
The Witness (2016) 4.5/10 +
Dizayga: Anthrocide (2018) 6/10 +
Silent Gallery: Neon Winter (2019) 5/10
Twilight Dawn (2019) 6/10
Faux Shaman: Forbidden (2020) 4.5/10
Radioactive Boss Baby: Radioactive Boss Baby (2022) 5/10
Prison Jar (2022) 5/10
Honeysuckle Flood (EP, 2022) 5/10
By far one of the best bands to emerge from the 2010s, Stabscotch approaches music like scientists of shock. Their genre-crossing is sensational, but also pointedly alienating. In spirit of the avant-garde, their music moves through a multitude of both awful and awesome audio textures. Singer (and bassist) Tyler Blensdorf also offers a refreshing voice: dorky yet violently manic, a theatrical presence that can be as alarming as it can be comical.
Even when results flop, I still savor the privilege to witness a band that has the courage to experiment with such unbridled passion.
Their album Uncanny Valley (2017) is a masterpiece of avant-garde metal, a hysterical and surreal exhibit of the band's creative dynamics. Its compositions assert the band's eclectic and esoteric range, reaching deep from underground theories of psychedelia, noise, and progressive rock.
In 2013, Stabscotch was formed at a college in Indiana by Tyler Blensdorf (vocals & bass), Zack Hubbard (guitar), and James Vavreck (drums). What began as an exercise of punk and Death Grips covers slowly escalated into the recording of their first album.
Eldritch was an ambitious musical effort, but suffered under amateur production techniques. While metal and post-hardcore are the album's primary influences, the brief deviations into other styles make an immature showcase of what would become the band's more abstract approach to songwriting.
In fact, the abstractions make up the music's most impressive moments. The opener Sun North Down starts with an ugly club music beat over Tyler's guttural ranting until a fifteen-second mathcore breakdown combusts the atmosphere, then settling into a calmer density of Tyler continuing to ramble as Hubbard's glittery guitar accompanies in psychedelic swaths. The closer Holiday begins with an echo-chamber soundscape until a post-hardcore/metal section breaks the ice, which is then escorted into a hip-hop/rap-rock section, then five minutes later the song changes again, where a groove is replayed into a small jam session until the fabric of the recording devolves into a short collage of glitchy feedback and noise. Other examples, like the psychedelic interludes Anhedonia and Ozymandias (the latter of which explodes into powerviolence for the last twenty seconds), or the acoustic introduction to I'm Here High, also exhibit the band's flexibility.
At times the mixing takes away from the music's overall force (the low volume of the instruments over Tyler's vocals is especially distracting in Genganger and Snake Dance) but other times it works as its own texture, as it sounds like the music is fighting against the recording equipment itself in My Head Is Loud and Irukandji.
With improved musicianship and more competent production, Stabscotch's Uncanny Valley would be one of the best albums of the 2010s, a 100-minute behemoth of schizophrenic ecstasy. It is a masterpiece of avant-garde metal, a hysterical and surreal exhibit of the band's experiments. Their compositions assert the band's eclectic and even esoteric range, reaching deep from the underground theories of psychedelia, noise-rock, and the avant-garde.
Beyond the metal and hardcore styles on Eldritch, the music flaunts elements of progressive rock, neo-psychedelia, Zappa-esque sound collages, and even moments of dark ambiance.
The opener Open Sesamij begins with barebone accompaniment, a drum beat, Tyler wails, and then a drooling bass builds suspense.
Stabscotch recorded The Witness in the sessions for Uncanny Valley, made up of looping drones and other improvised accompaniments in three parts, two of them (Inside Room and Thieves) being thirty minutes each and the last one (TIHKAL) being forty.
The artifacts from Uncanny Valley — like the hum of Radio Spiricom, vocals from I Master, the riff from Unknown Pleasures, etc. — make the album interesting as a conceptual spin-off, as if it is a meditation on the textures created in the "space" of its predecessor. If Uncanny Valley was a bang, then The Witness was its echo. But by half the runtime of each piece, the music overstays its welcome.
Ultimately, The Witness can be seen as a collage of outtakes from Uncanny Valley rather than something in their main studio canon.
Under the name Dizayga, Blensdorf released a solo album, Anthrocide: Exit by Accented Figures.
Under the name Silent Gallery, Hubbard released the post-rock album Neon Winter, produced by Blensdorf. In contrast to the ballistic Dizayga release, Hubbard's neatly-structured compositions show a sense of formality that's alien to the other Stabscotch-associated releases.
The album Twilight Dawn compiles the EPs 7 Is a Cycle and Drama Dragon, its tracklist swapping the sequence of Cycle or Drama's tracklists on different copies of its physical release.
In May of 2020 Blensdorf released another solo album under the name Faux Shaman, Forbidden. Its physical distribution was placement of the CDs at certain locations Blensdorf had indicated on social media.
Radioactive Boss Baby was a collaboration between Stabscotch and a fellow Visual Disturbances artist, Five Star Hotel. It is essentially trivial dance beats behind a aimless sound collage, largely accompanied by Blensdorf's over-edited vocals. It is messy, but nonetheless boisterous so it's not boring, and it exhibits the band's effort to work with electronics.
The more prevalent electronics and incoherent jumpcuts from Boss Baby would infiltrate Prison Jar with more mixed results. Most elements likely appeal to the internet "weirdcore" aesthetic, which can be fun but can also be obnoxious. At times the record gains my respect for its boldness, but then it annoys me a few seconds later.
Electronics continued to permeate their sound in the Honeysuckle Flood EP, released only two months later.
Though its proximity to the Prison Jar zaniness is obvious, songs show a more stable attitude toward melodies and rhythm, which actually works in their favor at some points, like the chorus of Seapunk.
TOP 10 SONGS
Tanic (2016)
Unknown Pleasures (2016)
Hands Undressed (2016)
TDYКИLА-THУRУ WARA (2016)
Gravity (2019)
The Fungal Brooden Rainforest (2016)
Radio Spiricom (2016)
Along Alligator Drunes (2016)
Dizayga: Here and There (2018)
The Last Alchemist (2019)