"Born at the start of the century in the D.C. punk scene, Black Eyes-with two drummers, two bassists, two singers, and a guitar that sounded like Rowland S. Howard possessed by the ghost of Sonny Sharrock- upended the genre's norms, melding no-wave noise and funk, percussive assault, and obtuse but guttural screeds against Bush-era America. By the time their second album, , came out,"
"So when Black Eyes reunited in 2023, it felt like a minor miracle. Hostile Design, in turn, is faced with an imposing question: How do you capture chaos in a bottle twice, years removed from the initial energy that fueled it? Though they've spent the past two years playing their older material on tour, Hostile Design doesn't sound like an attempt to retread old ground; instead, in typical Black Eyes fashion, they attempt something new."
Hostile Design finds Black Eyes channeling the same anger and experimental rigor that defined their early D.C. punk beginnings. The lineup's dual drummers, dual bassists, two singers, and a jagged guitar created a hybrid of no-wave noise, funk, percussive assault, and guttural screeds aimed at Bush-era America. Free-jazz elements previously fragmented the band's sound into misshapen forms; the reunion emphasizes dub and spacious production, stretching many tracks past six minutes to luxuriate in echo and delay. Songs like 'Under the Waves' foreground groovy basslines alongside noisy saxophone, while 'TomTom' becomes a cavernous, hypnotic sprawl haunted by reverberant textures.
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