Given the volatile nature of their original form and the subsequent pedigree of D.C.’s Black Eyes, suggesting a reunion at any point between their breakup ahead of 2004’s Cough and 2022’s first return rehearsals would’ve gotten you quizzical looks if you weren’t laughed out of a room first. Just have a look at the murderer’s row of related acts that trailed in the wake of the band’s demise: Mi Ami, Ital, Earthen Sea, Esau, Marriage, Water Damage (and that’s not even close to all of them). Unlike countless other early millennial bands cashing in, Black Eyes for a long time felt like a proposition spiritually opposed to such stunts, a beautifully cantankerous moment permanently consigned to history.
But for whatever hellish timeline we may be on now, this much is certain: Black Eyes has returned, and it is very much like they never left.
The big question of why has been given a simple, economic enough answer: Yeah, actually, this did start as a cash-in. The band initially reformed to celebrate the 20th anniversary (and re-release) of their debut self-titled album in the spring of 2023.
“We agreed to do the first weekend and there were some concerns, just in terms of how it would feel to play for three nights, four nights in a row, and just keep that as a very fixed goal … we’ll play with each other, we’ll play with our friends, and we’ll see how it goes,” Daniel Martin-McCormick told Treble recently. What the group found over the course of those shows, mining old material for a zine and a subsequent extended tour, was that there was a thrumming vitality to the decades-old songs, and the encouraging performances led to jam sessions that led to new music that led to new recordings that led here to Hostile Design.
What they haven’t emphasized as strongly is that there are grander parallel conditions at work, too. The current political climate, that aforementioned hellish timeline, a country at war with everyone and itself led by a bumbling fool too blessed by protection to be stressed by election — in those ways, Black Eyes’ timing could not be more apt because they’re picking up exactly where they left off in a chaotic environment only adjusted for inflation of thoughts and prayers. It makes sense this group sounds just right for right now — or, as Martin-McCormick puts it on opener “Break a Leg,” every regulation speaks to an immaculate design.
And what startling design the band has concocted over six songs at just about half an hour. What struck me at one of those reunion shows was just how jammy it sounded, but it’s interesting to note on Hostile Design that they still manage to breathe considerable room into what can at times be a suffocating skronk despite the fact that this is their most efficient release yet. Some of that is due to a slight shift in experimentation: Though the band’s core setup of two drums, a bass, guitar and sax remains the anchor, members’ individual pursuits have now added bass clarinet, live multichannel dubbing, and electronic drum triggers and samples. “Break a Leg” and “Burn” are ideal openers in this sense, leading with the furious fists of old before downshifting to dub (and then escalating again); at the other end of the album, “Yeah, Right” and “Tomtom” wrap things up as both the shortest and longest songs here. The tweaks are subtle on aggregate, but the added depth is noticeable in comparing their three records in back-to-back-to-back listens.
The lyrics haven’t pulled any punches, either. Their words have reliably occupied a sort of liminal realm where they’re loose enough to be about domestic politics, merely putting up with your parents or free-flowing brain fluid poetics, and that remains so here; in any case, though Martin-McCormick’s high-end vocal scrawls sound slightly more weathered, Hugh McElroy’s delivery hasn’t aged a day and even with the introduction of Greek (“Burn”), Arabic (“Pestilence”) and Haitian Creole (“Tomtom”) verses, there’s little question who you’re listening to or where they stand more broadly.
Of Dischord’s millennial post-punk generation that ushered out the ‘90s stalwarts — a trifecta that also included Q and not U and Faraquet — Black Eyes’ disbandment seemed at the time both least surprising and least likely to be resolved. That they’ve not only reformed, but made fresh art that sounds as essential as anything else in their catalog, is one of 2025’s welcome miracles. Let the bruise blood flow, let it be known: Hostile Design is the evolutionary form Black Eyes faithful no longer need lament for not having come to pass.
