In Slug It Out, Leo Luchini engineers a genre-agnostic schism in 11 songs – a sonic exorcism where the guitar mutates under the pressure of the 808, and electronic music bleeds into band music, until neither can be separated from the other. It is double-exposure as dramaturgy – the spectral afterimage of art-rock’s romantic impulse colliding with industrial psychedelia. The result: an arena where guitars scream, samples swirl, and vocals don’t sing—they seethe. This is confrontational theatre, not as spectacle, but as survival. Luchini, self-mythologizing auteur and emotional archivist, casts himself and a rotating crew of international collaborators (including Lord Spikeheart, NYCL Kai and Leo Luther) in a Ballardian opera of rage. The stakes are not symbolic—they are somatic. The album unfolds like a cinematic neural storm: alt-metal riffage on baritone guitars churn beneath trap hi-hats and drum’n’bass blasts, as heard in “Extinct Instinct” and “Off The Leash”. Each sonic strata is locked in a ritual of collision over cohesion. The palette is both nostalgic and post-human, at once recalling late 90s Nu-Metal histrionics with sampledelic schizophrenia. This is with exception of the confessional folk of “Full Moon Fallen”, where fingerpicking acoustic guitar patterns weave into lush saxophone arrangements, illustrating the precursing blossom of conflicted love. At the center: Luchini’s voice, sliding between Trent-Reznor-esque whispers, guttural yelps, bittersweet falsetto harmonics down to his vampiric low range. The lyrics, conceptual fragments stitched from taboo inner dialogues, are dragged in the aftermath of relational warfare and residual insanity, resisting linearity. They don’t narrate—they mirror vulnerability as violence, eroticism as confrontation, grief as glam. Created under the charge of a therapist’s provocation (as heard in “Fawn2Spawn”) – embrace your anger – Slug It Out becomes a ritualized unbinding. It’s not redemption that’s sought here, but permission: to rage, to weep, to lose control. Culture around the high-stakes spectacle of collision/impact become metaphors for inner-turmoil and brave journeys of the vulnerable self. The reference eco-system includes actions from art history, ring entrances and pregame rituals, paparazzi culture and surveillance, stunt choreography and independent cinema. This is not just an album; it’s a multi-sensory disassemblage rendered in ripping distortion, delay and damage. A blueprint for radical self-mythology via sonic confrontation; written, performed, recorded and produced by the artist himself.
