Cybergrinders Blind Equation change a key variable on A Funeral in Purgatory – Chicago Reader

Cybergrind is a difficult genre to define, but Gossip Wolf hears its spirit loud and clear in Blind Equation, a heavy-electronics project founded by Chicagoan James McHenry. Blind Equation’s second album, 2023’s Death Awaits, arguably set the template for this small but mighty underground scene: brittle chiptune synths race through complex, inventive arrangements, battered by tornadic drumming and scoured by screamo caterwauling. When McHenry started writing the next Blind Equation album, though, Death Awaits haunted him—it had worked so well that he had to tear himself free of its aesthetic gravity. He looked for a way to make a radical change.

“A lot of songs were scrapped, just because I felt like I needed to do something new for the sake of my own creativity,” McHenry says. “One thing that I needed to do was completely change the synths that I was using for Blind Equation and completely start off on a new palette—start from scratch.” The group’s third full-length, A Funeral in Purgatory, came out last month, and McHenry built its palette using Vital, a free virtual synthesizer with an extensive library of sounds as well as digital tools that make it easy to radically reshape waveforms. “The main goal of this album was to make it sound massive and expansive,” he says.

McHenry sought out a range of inspirations for A Funeral in Purgatory, including gloomy black metal, the cybernetic industrial crunch of the 2023 Health album Rat Wars, and the featherweight cloud rap of the 2020 Bladee release 333. “I really love Whitearmor’s production on that [Bladee] album,” he says. “I’m always interested in finding ways to re-create pop music that I love—or rap music, or genres completely outside of metal—but make that [into] metal, and make it work, and not make it sound corny.” 

McHenry also needed to adapt Blind Equation’s new sound to the stage. In concert, he’s backed by drummer Bill Kaszubowski and keytarist Jeffrey Kornfeld, and together they’ve retooled Blind Equation’s older material to fit the sound of A Funeral in Purgatory. “Jeff is now using different mikes and patches to match the synths on the new album—he has a lot more bell sounds to emulate that black-metal chime thing that goes on throughout the album,” McHenry says. “Even when we’ve been playing old songs, we’re a new-sounding band, despite having the same exact setup and same exact lineup.”

^{Blind Equation’s A Funeral in Purgatory was entirely written and recorded by James McHenry.}

Blind Equation celebrate A Funeral in Purgatory by headlining Subterranean on Sunday, August 31. Opening the show are Soulkeeper, Rakuyo, and glitchy, quasi-industrial local cybergrind group Hot Lettuce!, one of the new acts that have made Chicago a hotbed for the style. “It’s cool that there’s so many more artists doing cybergrind or something that’s adjacent enough to cybergrind to where they fit in on a bill,” McHenry says. “Chicago has a thriving experimental music scene, whether it’s in hyperpop, noise, extreme music, or cybergrind.” Tickets cost $21.80, and the music starts at 8:30 PM.

Gossip Wolf has caught wind of a new local posthardcore band, Laliberté, fronted by former Ira Glass guitarist Sunny Betz. Laliberté started in May, and Betz, drummer Lamb Buttons, bassist Shaye Rosengarden, and lead guitarist Matthew Hocutt have already put together enough material to fill an EP. The band will self-release the delightfully gnarly A Raucous Display of Ineptitude on Saturday, August 30. That night they’ll headline a release show at Esquina (4602 N. Western), a community arts space that shares an owner with Nomadic Ant, the jewelry shop next door. Laliberté will be selling cassette copies of the EP as well as a zine by Rosengarden called Auricle. IDM artist Oipeee! and Fruitleather songwriter D Jean-Baptiste (who contributes violin to A Raucous Display) open the show. Doors are at 6 PM, and the show starts at 7 PM. Attendees are encouraged to donate $10.

^{The new Love Story in Blood Red compilation isn’t online yet, but it will include songs from this 2003 album.}

In the 2000s, Chicagoan Jason Frederick performed and recorded as Love Story in Blood Red after the breakup of his band the Means. LSiBR’s scab-kneed rock ’n’ roll love songs impressed Reader critic Monica Kendrick, who in 2006 wrote that Frederick was “bitter in a literary and passionate way, and his vocals are stretched across a framework of spindly but grand and gritty rock.” The project has been dormant for almost a generation, but LSiBR will play their first show in 18 years on Friday, August 29, at Montrose Saloon. Frederick got the band back together in part to celebrate a forthcoming LSiBR compilation, Everything’s Everywhere, released as a double LP by New York indie label Goodtimes Rock-n-Roll Club. The show also features sets by French Casino, Nad Navillus (as a duo), and Another VU. Tickets are $15, and the first band starts at 8 PM.

In July, south-side postpunk band Fantasma Negra self-released their debut EP, the bone-chilling L.U.S.T. To celebrate, they’ll play at the dream-pop minifest Unsummer, which takes place on both of Subterranean’s stages on Saturday, August 30. It brings together a crowd of bands whose music likewise feels like a blast of arctic air. Darksoft, Cool Heat, and Heels play downstairs; Fantasma Negra headline upstairs, with openers Carrellee, Velvet Wounds, and Nothing but Silence. Advance tickets are $33.14 ($21.80 for a single bill), and both shows kick off at 7:30 PM.

Gossip Wolf is always looking for interesting new ways to hear music with fellow Chicago fanatics. That makes Ambient Chess pretty irresistible! This periodic event offers the chance to play a casual game of chess (bring your own board) to a soundtrack of adventurous, trance-inducing electronic music. Ambient Chess is currently helmed by DJ duo Kissparcht (aka Megha Bamola and Plight Jada), and their next night will take over the front bar at Sleeping Village on Thursday, August 28. Guest DJs Chelliah and Rik will join Kissparcht; it’s free and starts at 7 PM.