Cassyette - This World Fucking Sucks

Titling your album ‘This World Fucking Sucks’ is a bold move, but knowing a little more about Cassyette’s backstory, you begin to understand its moniker more clearly. Releasing her debut after a slew of deeply personal struggles (the singer lost her father unexpectedly in 2020, and has grappled with addiction issues in the wake), the pain she’s felt over the past few years is very tangibly imbued within the record. It’s perhaps best distilled in the scorched ‘When She Told Me’ – a track which veers seamlessly from crunchy nu metal riffs to haunting vocals – with its devastating chorus refrain of “I can’t cry anymore”, as she sings of her reaction after being told of her father’s passing. 

For all the emotional toil at play here, though, it’s also an album that does absolute justice to her status as a new, genre-defying voice in rock. From the drum and bass drive of ‘Sex Metal’, through to the more bubblegum pop of ‘Sugar Rush’, via the reflective epic of ‘Over It’, these fourteen tracks swerve through different iterations of the genre with confidence and ease. It’s the stripped back ‘Dear Sister’ that disarms most, with its tender message of appreciation and support (“I would take your pain so please just ask me for help / I hate to think you’re drowning and it’s all by yourself”), providing a gorgeous sparkle of light in the dark of the wider world.