Intensive Care & The Body : Was I Good Enough?
Toronto’s Intensive Care and Providence, Rhode Island’s The Body have each built up catalogs of their own uniquely caustic-sounding music. Each act’s recorded output encapsulates abrasive soundscapes dripping with unease; yet underneath such oppressive atmospheres springs a surprisingly melodic sensibility. Intensive Care pull this off via their compelling blends of noise, and in The Body’s case, by weaving various genres together to create compositions layered with unique contrasts.
Was I Good Enough? is a new collaboration between the two acts and a strong showcase for their abrasively approachable sensibilities. Throughout the record’s eight tracks, The Body and Intensive Care provide an overwhelming noise-centered presentation, but the noise isn’t unstructured; rather, the chaos is built out of the DNA of hip-hop. The two acts offer their take on the “chopped and screwed” sound, taking inspiration from the Houston rap production style that focuses on slowing down the tempo.
While the record isn’t without its moments of intense abstraction, Was I Good Enough? thrives on how The Body and Intensive Care shape their noise-focused madness into digestible experiences. In opener “Mistakes Have Been Made,” repeated uses of droning distortion and thumping bass come together to cast a rhythm that drawls; that rhythm never feeling too sludgy or noisy but offering a hypnotic flow. “Swallowed by the God” kicks this sound up several notches, the hypnotic presentation conveying a more immediate, yet haunting vibe.
With its embrace of such a broad range of styles—including hip-hop, pop, industrial, noise and metal—Was I Good Enough? flourishes with an abundance of sound. The end result is something like The Body and Intensive Care creating their own unique take on horrorcore. In The Body and Intensive Care’s case, their take on the rap subgenre feels like an ominous sort of EDM, with songs like “The Riderless Mount” and Cartography of Suffering” custom fit for goth clubs.
At 10 minutes long, album closer “Mandelbot Anamnesis” stands as the record’s most colossal standalone piece. Roaming drones and distorted noise fill the air as vocals burst from the depths. Yet, for as abstract and spacious as the song is, it’s still constructed in a way that vaguely resembles a conventional hip-hop beat. Here, Intensive Care and The Body push the chopped-and-screwed style to its limits, employing varying degrees of minimalism and maximalism to thrilling effect.
Whether it’s metal, hip-hop or noise, the definition of heavy music has undergone some dramatic changes in the 21st century. Much of that evolution is thanks to bands like The Body and Intensive Care, two artists who push themselves to create art that challenges our assumptions of what it means to make music that’s heavy. And Was I Good Enough? is just such an album.
Label: Closed Casket Activities
Year: 2025
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