Victim of God arrived alongside the full release of Patriarchy’s highly anticipated album, Manual for Dying. The record as a whole is an unflinching exploration of the human experience in its darkest form, with the duo of Actually Huizenga and The Drummer utilizing their genre-blurring instincts and forming them into a sound that defies categorization, all propulsive, gripping, and impossible to turn away from.
On Manual for Dying, Patriarchy confront the bleakest corners of existence, dismantling illusions of power and control in pursuit of liberation. The album was largely produced by Twin Shadow
“We would suggest crazy ideas and the answer was always yes,” Patriarchy says. “The environment in his studio is unmatched, and what he did to the demos we brought him was nothing short of ritual magic.”
Like the singles that came before it, Victim of God is a vivid, deeply expressive track with plenty to express.
“The songs celebrate the ability to feel deeply, to hurt, to desire, to experience pleasure and pain without shame, and to live without the approval of God—whoever or whatever society has chosen as god this week,” Patriarchy says.
“We started playing some of the songs live before they were ever released, which allowed us to feel them out in real time and engage with audiences to shape the structures,” the band admits. “We even added live stage recordings to ‘Boy on a Leash.’”
In relation to how the new album fits into Patriarchy’s body of work, Actually Huizenga says: “I think Manual for Dying has a more optimistic energy, more danceability, and, sonically, a hotter and more in-your-face mixing style, thanks to our prodigy mix engineer Erik Brauer (son of the legendary Michael Brauer). At the same time, it was created with the same childlike naïveté I’ve brought to all my music, with the desire to make something that really excited me, scared me, and truly expressed how I felt at that moment.”
ZR