Listen: Jucifer’s Dystopia Discomfits, Destroys

If you first experienced Jucifer in like 2000 via the random arrival of their debut album, Calling All Cars On The Vegas Strip, then the duo’s unusual vibe is something that you at least kept an eye on. That debut — btw on the same label as 311 and (gulp) Cake — arrived in the guise of hummable heavy grunge, but detours into really scary, screaming rage. Then, it felt like escalation from the shitfittery of Morissette and Hanna, alongside Drill and Skunk Anansie. But its result was that a listener got a sense of their capability for violence and watched for it, while also pondering that they’re a wife-and-husband duo that is “always on tour” for they reside in their tour bus. (Plus, maybe you first heard the word “jucifer” spoken by a lifer racist. No connection here.)

So, for those who’ve had our eyes on Jucifer if not our ears, their new album District Of Dystopia (out last month) is a wake-up call: Jucifer is much lower, much more pissed in 2015. Super pissed. I mean, it’s no stretch for a pair of no-fixed-address types to rail against the machinery and concepts of America’s funky government, no shock there. But any listener can feel the jolt from DoD‘s vileness, its marriage of Converge and Anal Cunt, its sonic and spiritual resemblance to a black metal album created to celebrate its authors’ first anniversary of having gotten AIDS. It’s like a cool cousin who turns up a decade later in the news for beheading a Kindergarten teacher. Crank it!

Jucifer’s District Of Dystopia came out December 9 via Nomadic Fortress. Get it here and here.