Street Sects
Bio by Max Freedman
Dry Drunk, the long awaited third record by the acclaimed industrial hardcore duo Street Sects, comes with a surprise: the introduction of their new band, Street Sex, and its debut LP.
The first mainline Street Sects album in seven years arrives alongside Street Sex’s Full Color Eclipse, which introduces the pair’s radiant new outlet for their shared love of pop, melody, hooks, and higher production values. While Dry Drunk finds Leo Ashline and Shaun Ringsmuth pushing Street Sects’ familiar abrasive sound to new extremes–lyrically, it details a period of hellish sobriety following Ashline’s relapse and recovery from crack cocaine addiction–Full Color Eclipse weaponizes pop conventions to tell a story about indulging in fantasy and exploration without fear of consequence. The group’s most intentional and powerful works to date, place Dry Drunk and Full Color Eclipse across the street from each other, and the former’s ballistic rage registers as envy of the latter’s vibrant hedonism.
The idea to work on two albums at once came after a difficult period for the duo: following Ashline’s 2020 relapse, Street Sects broke up for a year and a half. Working on both the new Street Sects album and their new Street Sex project with producer Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe) helped rebuild their bond. “Ben brought a fresh perspective that revived the process and saved the band in many ways,” Ringsmuth says. “Since Ben had no history with the band, his contributions gave the project a new perspective, revitalizing the approach, and we found ourselves communicating easily.”
“If you don’t want to relapse, you have to keep yourself on a pretty tight leash,” Ashline says, pivoting to Dry Drunk. “For me, the hell of sobriety is the normalcy, the mundanity of routine, the lack of adrenaline, the overwhelming numbness that develops the more comfortable and safe your life becomes,” he adds while noting that Dry Drunk is a sort of spiritual sequel to Street Sects’ debut album, 2016’s End Position, on which he reported directly from the depths and agony of active addiction. Where Dry Drunk documents restlessness within stagnation, the characters on Full Color Eclipse instead go overdrive in embracing what Ashline calls “the everyday, commonplace desires that we’ve been conditioned to conceal and feel ashamed of.”
Dry Drunk watches Full Color Eclipse throwing a house party through a dirty window and fumes violently; seeing others revel in what you can no longer enjoy builds envy, resentment and disgust. On Dry Drunk’s “The Glass Shithouse,” the narrator picks up his sobriety chip at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting following a relapse and a night spent in jail. “I deserve a break / I need it, I want it, I’d slit my own throat for it,” Ashline sneers and shouts as double-time blast beats surround him, evoking how the droll routine of everyday life suffocates one in recovery. This metaphorical closing-in manifests as self-hatred on “Spitting Images,” a burst of noisy static with a narrator who projects his loathing outward and hurts everyone around him. “Not counting the exaggerated violence, I have been this person at times,” Ashline says. “I think many people in recovery have.”
Full Color Eclipse offers a vision of the opposite life, of saying yes to the irresistible and salacious. The chorus of “Turn Blue,” an electronic track with danceable upbeat melodies and pummeling percussion that commands you to “fuck until your face turns blue / and then, maybe you’ll improve / fuck until your eyes pop out, then maybe / you’ll never suffer again.” “Half Laugh,” with techno influences that rank it among the clubbiest of the bunch — Ringsmuth cites Avalon Emerson and Floating Points as influences on his sound design for the album — approaches a swingers’ party with humor and gusto: “Life is a blessing / When you’re undressing / Have a good time!” There are thematic variations too: On “Perpetuity,” which is the most purely beautiful the duo has ever sounded, Ashline basks in the track’s gorgeous synthetic glow while reflecting on the challenges of navigating the music industry. “What am I paying you for? / The money goes out the door / I wish I would have signed you when you were younger…and hungry.” Told through the perspective of a morally compromised record label owner, the song details the growing divide between the cynicism of the old guard, where gatekeepers fight to retain their grip on the ever changing landscape, and the naive enthusiasm of the aspiring artist, doomed to fail before they even begin.
The next Street Sex album is already in the works, and it’s likely to be the next release from Ashline and Ringsmuth. A brighter future is on the horizon: “I’m hoping Dry Drunk will be the final chapter in this addiction-focused narrative that has been at the heart of so much of our work,” Ashline says. On Dry Drunk and Full Color Eclipse, the duo face the valley between stability and reckless abandon together, emerging on the other side united with their best music to date.
