I was gonna start this with a bit of a preface talking about the long wait for Ration Strain’s debut album since she teased it back in 2023 with the Liminal single and how she found a home in Negative Gain thanks to a Mechanismus Showing and all that jazz but I think I’ll leave it to just this one sentence and move on to the really juicy part of this article. And that is that Ratio Strain’s pounding rhythmic noise debut Exorcism is finally here. Well, it’s been here and I’m probably a month late on the review but, hey, I do what I can when sifting through the momentous releases the industrial and underground electronic scene sees on the daily.
Exorcism is best described as an album that’s aiming to make you move with no song so prominent in defining that phrase than Kilig. Tips and taps and warning like synths and quick breaths roll into the song before we’re given a punchy and thumpy beat. Electronic layers and plenty of breaks throughout ensures the song never gets boring. This has been a companion to me both inside and outside of the gym – but mostly in helping fuel my sets and mindset.
EBM becomes a primary focus on the song that’s directly after that, and subsequently another of my favorites on the album Slubberdegullion. Right after sampling a line from one horror movie or another (I tried finding the origin on Google / Bing but was provided two different AI answers with no real definitive backup) we’re slapped right into a boot-stomping good time. Energy and power, scraping backing electronics, and industrial textures.
Andronitis is another of my favorites. It’s not quite as beat’em’up as the previous two singles but does have a nice kick to it. At times I wished that there were less samples over the mix so I could enjoy the beat itself but that was minor. As it always came full circle and slapped me in the face. Fast paced industrial dance music with a reliance on a bit of drum’n’bass.
There’s but one track on the album that I wasn’t too fond of and that’s Nefandous. Imagine the sounds of an AI being birthed in the middle of a remote factory that’s been shut down and now it’s just getting everything started back up and gears are being woken up and bots with tools are now all over the place. If listening to that sounds cool, then this song is for you. But to put it at what has largely been an album meant to get you moving is such an odd choice. I think if this was put smack in the middle as track five and was forty-five seconds to a minute long it would have been an interesting distraction. But as a finale it disappoints.
Exorcism is a pretty damned good debut from Ratio Strain. I find the beats complex and the layers fascinating and the bass is lovely. Some of the samples that have been pulled from movies / shows do take me out of the music every once in a while and the finale was disappointing. But the album is still full of bangers but how much I enjoy them varies from song-to-song. Kilig and Slubberdegullion are the absolute highlights of the album.
Then the question becomes what would I like to see from Ratio Strain moving forward. Collaborations here and there and I wouldn’t mind seeing her experiment with her voice some. Doesn’t have to be singing, could even be just some spoken word, but replacing the movie / show samples with her own lyrics and phrases would make the music much more personal to the listener and could create a deeper, emotive connection. But this is me nit-picking at this point. Well done and I’m looking forward to seeing how Ratio Strain grows.
