Richmond dance-rock outfit Knifing Around don’t just flirt with tension on Vivisect—they grab it by the throat and drag it onto the dance floor. Released through Blank Verse Records, the band’s latest album is a sweaty collision of industrial grime, new-wave sharpness and emotional unease, all wrapped inside grooves designed to keep bodies moving even while the lyrics spiral into paranoia, heartbreak and cultural decay. It’s dark, restless and strangely addictive, like dancing under flickering neon lights while the world burns outside.
You can hear traces of Nine Inch Nails, Devo and LCD Soundsystem in the DNA, sure, but Knifing Around carve out their own jagged identity through sheer intensity. Their sound feels tightly coiled, almost claustrophobic at times, yet every song pulses with kinetic energy.
Opening track “Believe” sets the tone immediately with sharp, churning guitars shimmering over hard-thumping drums. The instrumentation feels anxious and urgent, constantly pushing forward while the vocalist delivers lines in a half-slurred, frustrated haze. You can feel the heartbreak, as if he’s trying and failing to convince themselves a collapsing relationship was ever worth believing in at all.
Then the title track “Vivisect” tears through the speakers with buzzing, gritty guitars and pounding percussion. The singer sounds reckless and sharp-edged, like he’s unraveling in real time. It’s confrontational but strangely cathartic, capturing the album’s central push-and-pull between chaos and release.
Meanwhile, “Bodysnatchers” might be the album’s creepiest high point. A deep buzzing bassline collides with glitchy electronics and relentless beats while the vocalist sinks into a despondent, slow-burning delivery. Lyrics about replicas, stolen identities and being “robbed of your face” tap into fears of conformity and emotional erasure. The atmosphere is unsettling as hell, yet hypnotically danceable at the same time.
That’s the magic trick Vivisect keeps pulling off: making existential dread groove unbelievably hard.
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Review by: Naomi Joan