Akron, Ohio rapper Zmack has spent years turning an unconventional musical upbringing into a sound that refuses to sit still. His late best friend CJ was his earliest collaborator, with the pair making beats and rapping together since middle school, and that shared foundation still echoes through Zmack’s work. On Rustbelt Rejects, grief, Irish-American identity, Rust Belt decay, humour, and hard-earned self-reinvention collide across an album that treats genre boundaries more like suggestions.
The project draws from Memphis trap, Horrorcore, shadow rap, doom, sludge, industrial, New Wave, funk-metal, nu-metal, dubstep, and phonk. Zmack produced the beats and recorded his vocals between his home setup and collaborator Dave’s studio in Northeast Ohio, experimenting with distorted slap-bass, mechanical power-tool textures, dubstep-style low end, and Memphis-inspired drums. The song brings rough textures, sitting surprisingly well beside infectious grooves.
“Rust Sound” captures that philosophy head-on. Heavy bass and thumping beats rumble beneath sharp, gritty cymbals while Zmack attacks the track with a deep, grainy voice, rapping gravely and moodily before becoming increasingly feisty and ravenous. It sounds like the Rust Belt itself—weathered, loud, and still kicking.
“Blood of the Irish” shifts into warmer territory, opening with a softer soundscape before hard-hitting beats arrive. Zmack’s delivery becomes sincere and sharp, with cutting cymbals reinforcing the song’s exploration of Irish-American heritage, pride, history, and aggression.
Then “Dirty Muskrat” throws the doors off the hinges. Grinding distortion revs underneath deep bass and pounding drums as Zmack alternates between rapping and singing with palpable frustration. Dark, grimy, strange, and funny, it is exactly the sort of left turn that makes the album tick.
Ultimately, Rustbelt Rejects sounds less like a collection of influences than one artist smashing them together until something unmistakably his emerges. Raw, restless, and unapologetic, it turns decay into texture and personal history into noise worth hearing.
Review by: Naomi Joan