Song of the Day: Monday, 3/30/26 (#9)
Today's Song of the Day is "xxxxxx is Dead" by Black Smoke Rises, released as the thirteenth and final track from their 2021 album of the same name. You can find today's Song of the Day on bandcamp, Spotify, and YouTube.
The genre of today's Song of the Day is mixed. It contains significant elements of trap metal, the most prevalent of which is the assortment of incredible, hard-hitting basslines littered throughout the track and all of Black Smoke Rises's work in general. It also contains significant elements of breakcore or drum 'n' bass, with breakbeats which are at various times chopped up or left looping. There are side servings of ambient music, with its various periods of light ambience left looping, and noise, medium-sized dollops of which are littered throughout the whole album.
This song is an incredibly cathartic release of tension that has been built up through the whole album. That tension is mirrored in the song. The tension in the album is built up not through slow moments but faced-past fury, intense breaks and raw trap metal beats. This title track's 19 minute breadth therefore also begins with chopped up Amens, distorted basslines, and starry samples which contribute a hectic atmosphere (the version on streaming is missing some samples for some reason as compared with the Bandcamp version). The song then falls out into just a small melody, a thick bassline, and that same starry sample toned down to fall into the background, for almost exactly half the song's duration, after a slow section where the track's energy peters out. This song feels, to me, like when you've danced your heart out with a combination of manic energy and depressive avoidance and are finally sitting down, sweaty and disgusting, and having an ice-cold cup of water that shocks your system a little too much. This shit makes me feel something indescribable. Maybe it's also about a personal connection with the artist's story.
Black Smoke Rises is a pretty prolific musician, having also released music under the names DJ Five, Yung Rimanah, XX99, and 99, and probably more, as well as having been part of the Kawaii Goon$ and Killstreak Certified collectives for some time, contributing production to both. Their music is often straddling the line between instrumental hip hop and breakcore, with the hip hop side of things leaning into trap metal and tread and the breakcore side of things being a little more ambient and atmospheric. The .txt file attached to the bandcamp download of Don't Call Me xxxxxx Anymore, That Man's Dead to Me is really harrowing but also really emotionally powerful and encapsulates a lot of what I feel about their music and why I feel so connected to it. I love so much of this artist's music.
I hope you guys love this song as much as I do. I really, honestly, have never heard anything like it before or since.
