Gerade erscheint mit “Before the Skeletal Dance of our Festering Jesters” das erste vollständige Album der Flesh Eating Society seit 2018. Das Duo Blind Johnny Smoke und The Juddaman verarbeitet darauf sowohl politische Frustration als auch persönliche Umbrüche. Nach einem plötzlichen, weitgehenden Hörverlust Ende 2023 ist Blind Johnny, der bis auf einen Gastbeitrag alle Songlyrics verfasst hat, nur noch in der Lage, tiefe Frequenzen wahrzunehmen – ein Umstand, der das basslastige Klangbild des Albums entscheidend mitprägt. Musikalisch bewegt sich das Werk im weiten Feld zwischen Drum’n’Bass, Electronic Body Music und noisigen Fragmenten. Die oft rhythmisch vorgetragenen Texte wirken wie eine persönliche Abrechnung – sprachlich vielschichtig, direkt, zornig. Melodische Synthiepassagen setzen Kontraste, doch insgesamt bleibt der Sound rau und unversöhnlich. “Before the Skeletal Dance of our Festering Jesters” ist eine kompromisslose Auseinandersetzung mit einer Welt im Zerfall – und dem Versuch, trotz wachsender Einschränkungen künstlerisch Haltung zu bewahren. Es erscheint als streng imitiertes Tape und digital bei Cruel Nature Records.

“Blind Johnny Smoke was born severely deaf in both ears, and started to lose his vision as a teenager with only a few degrees of central vision remaining and still decreasing. Then at the end of 2023 he experienced a sudden loss of his remaining hearing on his left side leaving him profoundly deaf. This posed huge questions for him, what life will be like going forward, how this would change how he felt about the nefarious shit going on in the world around him, and whether he was still equipped to be able to express himself through music. With the aid of The Juddaman, the answer lies within the tapestry of ‘Before the Dance of our Festering Jesters’. Musically, the album is almost obscenely focused on bass frequencies, which coincidentally are the only sounds Blind Johnny can detect without hearing aids. There is a dub sensibility that the band have always dabbled with, but here it weighs in heavily alongside trademark percussive programming and unmusical cut up noise. The accompanying words are as angry as ever and, after a few years of Blind Johnny performing on the spoken word circuit, the lyrics have depth and trickery sitting alongside blunt vitriol. Hear nothing, see nothing, speak nothing, and even think nothing. Themes of apathy and lack of empathy can be seen in the cover art, hidden amongst a scan of a diseased retina and other visual noise. ‘Before the Dance of our Festering Jesters’ stands tall in the discography of FEF, a bleak and burly dissection of the failings of the modern world and how an increasingly disabled artist can interact and affect this world”. (Cruel Nature)