Street Sects Fight for Survival on "Featherweight Hate"

There are many angry bands pushing out dissonant, punishing tracks across the globe, but the Austin industrial duo Street Sects have a unique ability to wring complicated emotions out of their tortured sonics. Some feelings, if not screamed, would go unsaid—so they do just that today on a new single called "Featherweight Hate."

The track—a standout from their forthcoming LP End Position (due out on The Flenser in September)—with a few seconds of labored breathing, and then a relentless thrashing for the remainder of its two-and-a-half minute runtime. It's the sound of struggling to stay above water, when drowning would be way easier. Leo Ashline's dizzy vocals and Shaun Ringsmuth's harrowing noise work compete for limited air, edging each other out in a careening push and pull that feels like a tense fight for survival.In an email to THUMP, the band wrote that the track is meant to reflect the ways that we can take power back in our own lives.

"I believe that people can change, can better themselves, but good deeds don't negate bad deeds, and a person's character cannot be 'redeemed,'" the duo writes. "The concept of redemption is a sort of spiritual propaganda, just as the concept of rehabilitation is a political fiction used to prop up a corrupt and ineffective criminal justice system. Our place in the world is not determined by an imaginary scale that weighs our mistakes against our virtues. In life we either sink or we swim, and more often than not it's beyond our control. The character in 'Featherweight Hate' decides to take back that control by removing the variables. By keeping his gun loaded and his eyes open. Sometimes the best way to keep swimming is to cut the dead weight."

The track is streaming below right now in advance of End Position's September 16 release on The Flenser. Listen up, alongside the single's great artwork.