Grimes - Kill V. Maim

If there’s one fact Grimes wants people to firmly understand with new album ‘Art Angels’, it’s that she’s more confident and in control than ever. A chopping and changing three years between records have done nothing to stunt her. Nor has inking a Roc Nation management deal, penning singles for gigantic pop stars, or becoming a superstar in her own right. The focus has been on this LP.

At the end of her nightmarish and gory ‘Flesh Without Blood’ video, the credits read: “Written, Directed, Edited, Colored, + Art Directed by GRIMES”. And across her brave, near-baffling but completely fearless new album, she gives timely reminders that this is all her doing. ‘Flesh Without Blood’ itself contains cowboy whip samples, and ‘SCREAM’ even has a sports whistle being blown in the background. Get in line, wait for orders, and listen to what Grimes has to say - that’s the motif of this record.

‘Kill V. Maim’ isn’t the only all-out, fantasy world banger to leap out of ‘Art Angels’, but it’s the most magnifying. Just when the next step doesn’t look like an option, she goes one further. Vocals go from enraged roars to a state of pitch-shifting bananas. It’s an odd state of joy that catches you like a spider’s web.

A zombie disco, crazy cyborg of a pop song, it’s the further depth of Grimes’ imagination to have been exposed to date, and it’s impossible not to follow every move like watching a mad plot unfold. Naturally, the song’s all about Al Pacino’s Goldfather Pt 2 character becoming a gender-switching vampire. “You gave up being good when you declared a state of war,” she chants, and make no mistake - this is Grimes at her most uncompromising, doing battle on her terms.