Like some kind of Lovecraftian construct, maddening in its ever-shifting, non-Euclidean nature,
I Set My Friends on Fire are a tough band to paint a picture of. With a sound that’s constantly shifting in any and all directions, their second album,
Astral Rejection, pushes and pulls listeners in almost every direction at the same time, switching from glitchy electronic to math metal to Auto-Tuned pop not only within the same song, but sometimes within the same minute. What really sets them apart from the ultra-ironic metal-turned-crunk of
Brokencyde or the mind-bending electro-metal experiments of
Genghis Tron, however, is that there is seldom an attempt to merge all of these things, instead allowing everything to exist in its own world with minimal bleed, giving the impression of a radio that’s pulling in just a hint of another station. In a lot of ways,
Astral Rejection feels like a series of tests designed by
I Set My Friends on Fire to test the listeners’ endurance by shocking their sensibilities at every turn, and if you can push through the Auto-Tune, you might be surprised by what you find. ~ Gregory Heaney