The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Failure

[#] In The Future Your Body Will Be the Furthest Thing From Your Mind (2018)

Occasionally pretentious, but otherwise all thrusters on.

Reviewed December 8, 2025

The Heart is a Monster felt like 5lbs of flour in a 10lbs bag, but ITFYBWBTFTFYM (what a horrible album title, my God) finally feels like a follow-up worthy of Fantastic Planet's cinematic intensity. Released in EP-sized chunks over a couple months to aid digestion, Failure hones their lunging, polished science fiction rock to a sharp point here, working not just on sonics, but on the thrillingly immediate songcraft as well. "Found a Way" is the thicker, more focused cousin to Magnified's already bombastic "Frogs". "Solar Eyes", "Paralytic Flow", and "Distorted Fields" rip and rumble on their live wire guitar leads and Kellii Scott's killer drumwork. About three-quarters of the record is prime Failure, and while the other quarter tends to be the last leg of it, it's an otherwise massive step up from the spotty Monster.

Several cuts subtly infuse new colors into Failure's well-dyed sound. "Dark Speed"'s ominous spoken word evokes Information-era Beck a la a less groovy "Dark Star". Golden's "Pennies" gets the studio upgrade as "Petting the Carpet" did on Monster, with Failure coating their acoustic guitars in the thumping, high-fidelity black ice production that's become their specialty. No doubt thanks to his increased vocal confidence on recent Autolux records, Greg Edwards is heard more and more often, even manning the 70s AM radio piano ballad closer "The Pineal Electorate" all by his lonesome. Even some of the segues are kinda neat! The few less-than-satisfying moments mostly come when Failure push their distrust of modern technology a little plain and clunky towards the end ("Algorithms of demise", "You get your daylight from a screen", yeesh). Thankfully, those moments are few and far between.

Essential:	"Pennies", "Found a Way", "Distorted Fields"
Quintessential:	"Solar Eyes"
Non-Essential:	"Force Fed Rainbow" (also that album title)
Rating:
Further listening:	Download from Failure's Bandcamp