There are remarkably few albums that can be described as genuinely frightening—works that evoke not merely unease or tension but a deep, instinctive sense of dread. Among that elite and unsettling company, two recordings surface in my mind with almost immediate clarity: Daughters’ ‘You Won’t Get What You Want’ and Swans’ monumental ‘To Be Kind.’ Both of these records exist within a shadowy realm of sonic experimentation, conjuring emotional intensity that transcends the boundaries of conventional listening. Yet, they are not without what one might call baggage—cultural, emotional, or aesthetic weight that imbues their horror with context, making them as demanding as they are rewarding.
By contrast, The Body’s ‘I’ve Seen All I Need to See’ approaches fear from a different vantage. While it may lack the spectral atmosphere that defines Swans’ ‘To Be Kind,’ or the sinister, almost pop-inflected menace that pulses through Daughters’ work, it compensates for this absence with sheer, unrelenting brutality. The sound here does not merely suggest violence—it enacts it. The listener is not presented with the soundtrack to a horror film so much as thrust into its climactic, most savage scene, the one draped in distortion and rendered through thunderous, overdriven drums and guitars tuned so low they seem to grind against the earth itself.
The record commences with an unexpected, almost literary gesture—a spoken rendition of Douglas Dunn’s poem ‘The Kaleidoscope,’ a work rooted in the suffocating repetition of grief. Sparse, arhythmic percussion reverberates like the pulse of a struggling heart, while fractured bursts of electronic noise and a resonant metallic hum establish a sense of unease. As this introduction dissolves into the distant, anguish-laden screams of vocalist and guitarist Chip King, the opening track, ‘A Lament,’ emerges in jagged, faltering movement, as though the very act of beginning tears at the fabric of sound. It stumbles, gasps, and eventually ascends in a tortured attempt at momentum.
From this opening moment, one central truth becomes apparent: profound art does not always aspire to be pleasant. The album as a whole operates less as a collection of discrete songs and more as a colossal, unyielding structure—an auditory monument raised to the transformative power of distortion. Listening to it can feel like confronting a living entity that resists shape or containment. And it is worth admitting openly: ‘I’ve Seen All I Need to See’ is not a work designed for everyone. Its compositions are frequently atonal, its transitions opaque, and many of its percussive surges dissolve into hypnotic repetition. Even when the pace accelerates to something resembling motion beyond a funeral dirge, the music retains a strange gravity, as though the band members are clawing their way from the depths of a sonic mire that refuses to let them go.
Yet within this oppressive landscape, moments of revelation and liberation emerge. A particularly striking example arises in ‘The City Is Shelled,’ where, near its conclusion, King’s voice mutates into an eerie, goblin-like rasp, rising above relentless percussion and hammering piano chords. Beneath the crushing weight of distortion and fuzz, a faint, unexpected thread of melodicism surfaces—a brief but unmistakable gesture toward beauty. It is a rare and cathartic oasis amid a vast expanse of auditory desolation, proof that even in the harshest noise, emotional expression persists.
Though its total runtime barely exceeds thirty-eight minutes, ‘I’ve Seen All I Need to See’ often feels far longer, not because it drags, but because it demands endurance akin to a physical trial. The experience evokes the grueling persistence of a marathon: difficult, exhausting, but deeply rewarding for those who complete it. Enduring the album means engaging with its rawness, acknowledging that its beauty resides precisely in its brutality. Like a bleak yet mesmerizing film such as ‘Bring Her Back,’ it lingers in memory not because it comforts, but because it wounds insightfully. And we return to the reminder stated earlier—good art, truly transformative art, need not be pleasing. It is often the art that unsettles us most profoundly that reveals the deepest truths about emotion, mortality, and sound itself.
For listeners seeking a recording that captures the genuine darkness of horror without surrendering to parody or camp—music that radiates authentic danger and dread rather than a safe, stylized spookiness—’I’ve Seen All I Need to See’ by The Body stands as a rare and compelling achievement. It is the sound of fear incarnate, executed with precision and intention, available now through Bandcamp and all major streaming services such as Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, YouTube Music, and Spotify—an invitation to step willingly into the abyss of noise, and to emerge, if you can, transformed.
Sourse: https://www.theverge.com/column/806767/you-need-to-listen-to-the-body-ive-seen-all-i-need-to-see
