The tale might be a fabrication. According to Lip Critic, the band had begun drafting the successor to their 2024 debut Hex Dealer when an odd stroke of fate intervened: frontman Bret Kaser had his identity stolen and used to place numerous orders, including — which Kaser took as a demonic wink — the group’s entire catalog on Bandcamp. Supposedly, when the offender later appeared at the band’s merch table, clad in a Five Nights At Freddy’s hoodie and grinning behind a surgical mask while reciting Kaser’s Social Security number, he revealed himself as a devotee who believed that by hacking Kaser he had cracked a hidden puzzle within Lip Critic’s music. The outfit insists that the bizarre incident compelled them to abandon the progress on their album and start anew with a project about online fixation, fractured selfhood, and (naturally) theft in contemporary life.
The premise feels almost tailor-made for Lip Critic’s high-octane, noise-saturated approach, sitting alongside Hex Dealer’s piece about a man who suspects his son and the mailman of plotting his murder. Or the tale of a con artist fabricating a miracle with grocery-store meat. Or the yarn about animal-human hybrids that some Genius minds might read as a reference to the manosphere. If the identity theft really happened, it was so immaculate it begged to be fodder for another bout of Lip Critic madness. And if it was all a fabrication, that would perhaps fit Theft World’s carnival-mirror take on a modern, scams-powered society—from the President downward.
“The entire world, unfortunately, has turned into something of a casino,” Donald Trump told reporters just recently, sidestepping questions about aides betting on Iran-related outcomes via prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket. Trump isn’t known for his accuracy, yet in this case his metaphor hits the mark. While public health experts persist in raising alarms, Drake seems to be cashing in by dovetailing promotions with questionable streamers rather than hitting the road, and a prominent college football program’s quarterback has paused his season to enter a residential gambling treatment program. Today, former NBA player Damon Jones became the first person to plead guilty in a gambling crackdown that yielded about 30 arrests. In the end, the house always wins.
Yet the act of theft underpins far more than gambling. From data breaches to deepfakes, from fake recruiters to impostor Nigerians, your smartphone is crowded with people trying to bleed you dry. Sometimes literally: as Corpus Christi becomes the first U.S. city to exhaust its water supply, data centers gulp endless quantities of energy to power plagiarism engines. American corporations raised prices to offset Trump-era tariffs, then collected federal subsidies when the Supreme Court later ruled those tariffs illegal. Trump himself has spent his presidency orchestrating more cons than anyone can tally. Shoddy goods and services, apps designed to monopolize your attention, and dwindling cultural production due to corporate consolidation — all of these have carved away at what we once had.
This is the truth reflected by Lip Critic’s manic genre collage. With intensifying momentum, Theft World digs deeper into the dark absurdity and sharp aggression that defined Hex Dealer. It’s an album populated by naive fools, desperate schemers, and people chasing the lure of stimulation off a cliff, set to a soundtrack that feels like an endless cyberpunk meltdown. “Jackpot,” where a wide-eyed Kaser accrues debt chasing a thrill, smoothly leads into “Debt Forest,” which opens with a hollow narrator facing an ATM. On the opening track “Two Lucks,” he declares, “In that junk space, I’m the junk god,” before lamenting, “You are the hell I’ve made for myself.”
Often, Kaser writes from the vantage point of dopamine-addicted figures at the end of their tether. “Always blame, chasing a quick fix / If it’s only a day away I’m already sick,” he sings on the lead single “Legs In A Snare.” “But the way it unfolds / I had to take the wheel / I leave myself in the ER / Just to know it was real,” he repeats on “Charity Dinner.” The kinetic “Drumming With Izzy” makes explicit the addiction at the heart of so much self-destructive behavior: “What I crave surpasses life itself / What I crave costs twice as much / What I crave isn’t in the bank / It’s buttons pressed and levers turned.” In the same track, we glimpse the obsessive super-fan mindset that can entangle itself with darker compulsions: “Oh man, I’d almost / I’d die to be near you / Die to be seen by / Die to be loved, I / Can’t explain why the need exists.”
Lip Critic’s sound renders these themes with particular force. It feels as if the internet’s darkest corners have barged into the physical world — forged in the heat of Death Grips, skirting the boundary between MSPAINT-like blunt-force synth-punk and YHWH Nailgun’s polyrhythmic noise-rock. The arrangements possess a scrapyard, cyborg energy, blending shards of hardcore, hip-hop, dance-punk, and drum ’n’ bass with spasms of discordant static and rare, satisfying bursts of melody. When not roaring, Kaser often adopts a semi-rapped cadence, chattering in a nasal tone reminiscent of Danny Brown or the Beastie Boys (whose “Sabotage” was a long-running Lip Critic live staple). It’s frenetic and explosive, untamed yet precisely engineered, like a manifesto from a gunman’s perspective.
The look and sound are unmistakably singular, and it’s remarkable how Lip Critic’s voice can contort across a single track. “Legs In A Snare” opens with eerie vocal harmonies. Then the beat drops and the pace rockets, with Kaser delivering nimble, nasally rap over a bass line that thunders and drums that crash. The track builds into a brutal nu-metal clash that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Family Values Tour bill, only to subside into a melodic ending that nudges the initial pop-tinged moment toward a hint of chiptune. It brushes against a multitude of genres without ever settling in one place.
That restlessness might be a songwriting liability, yet Lip Critic never loses the thread despite shifting textures. The combination of raw kinetic energy and a remarkably tight focus, with a perspective that verges on claustrophobic, allows the band to switch modes in ways that cleverly echo the attention-deficit-charged world they critique. “Drumming With Izzy” rides a torrent of tribal drums, and “My Blush (Strength Of The Critic)” answers with muscular big-beat spray worthy of the Chemical Brothers, yet both feel like expressions of the same internal impulse. When the chaotic dystopian clang of “Shoplifting” spills into a bridge of new jack swing topped by haunted-house organ chords, the resulting mayhem feels natural rather than forced.
What should listeners take away from an album like Theft World? A thrill, a fatigue, or a depression so profound you can only laugh manically? The record triumphs in portraying a society lodged in a dark, deranged place. It’s not a mental space I’d want to inhabit constantly, but many people do, and that is precisely why Lip Critic’s vision lands with such force. While it would be nice to think that this album’s portrait of a gilded culture corroding on the inside might someday feel obsolete, my fear is that it will only become more timely. Regardless of whether the album’s origin story is factual or not, its emotional resonance remains unsettlingly real.
Lip Critic – Theft World [LP]
Amazon
Theft World is released 5/1 on Partisan.
Other albums of note out this week:
• Kacey Musgraves’ Middle Of Nowhere
• American Football’s LP4
• Rostam’s American Stories
• Tori Amos’ In Times Of Dragons
• Thurston Moore & Bonner Kramer’s They Came Like Swallows – Seven Requiems For The Children Of Gaza
• youbet’s youbet
• Weird Nightmare’s Hoopla
• Hiss Golden Messenger’s I’m People
• Isaiah Rashad’s It’s Been Awful
• duendita’s existential thottie
• Seefeel’s Sol.Hz
• Modern Woman’s Johnny’s Dreamworld
• Maya Hawke’s Maitreya Corso
• Octo Octa’s Sigils For Survival
• The Black Keys’ Peaches!
• Blarf’s Film Scores for Films That Don’t Exist
• Melanie C’s Sweat
• Pope’s BFM
• Sub*T’s How My Own Voice Sounds
• White Beast’s Die Hard
• Pigeon’s OUTTANATIONAL
• Oddisee & Heno.’s From Takoma With Love
• The Boo Radleys’ In Spite Of Everything
• Martin Carr’s What Future
• Tyler Bates & RZA’s One Spoon Of Chocolate Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
• Jesca Hoop’s Long Wave Home
• Eli Moore’s The Power Line
• Jump Source’s Fold
• Andervel’s Ironclad & Palm Trees
• SUICIDAS’ Canciones Malditas
• Tarragon’s Home At Cofa’s
• Safety Trance’s sacrificio
• Eric Gabriel’s Lucky Day Roadrunner
• Rita Wilson’s Sound Of A Woman
• Laibach’s MUSICK
• Genre Is Death’s Attractive People
• Gabrielle Cavassa’s Diavola
• Anastasia Kristensen’s Bestiarium Sombre
• Glissandro 70’s G70 2: Bones Of Dundasa
• White Flowers’ Dreams For Somebody Else
• Ana Roxanne’s Poem 1
• Toadies’ The Charmer
• Emily Nenni’s Movin’ Shoes
• La Doña’s Corrientes
• Ernest’s Deep Blue
• Whipped Cream’s HOME WAS ALWAYS ME
• Super Furry Animals’ Precreation Percolation
• The Claypool Lennon Delirium’s The Great Parrot-Ox And The Golden Egg Of Empathy
• Yleiset Syyt’s Saitte Mitä Halusitte
• Will White’s It’s Easy To Let The Thoughts Gain Ground
• The Klezmatics’ We Were Made For These Times
• Gemma’s Be About It
• Valley Boy’s Children Of Divorce
• Paisley Fields’ Are U Mad At Me
• DoYeon Kim’s Wellspring
• Cindy’s Another Country
• Alberto Giurioli’s Leftovers
• Venom’s Into Oblivion
• Resilia’s By A Thread
• Genre Is Dead’s Attractive People
• The High Curbs’ High Speed
• Dorian Wood’s Canto De Todes
• Miss Bashful’s Glamour Snobby
• Psychobuildings’ Tears, Vol 1
• Moon Walker’s WASTELAND COUNTRY
• Emma Louise’s Sunshine For Happiness
• Taj Mahal’s Time
• Travess’ Blue Sun Lava Lamp
• Noveller’s I Am The Weather
• B.o.B.’s The Morning Bang
• Various Artists’ Chill’s Spotlight Vol. 7
• above me’s above me
• Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun: Girls Trip
• Halsey’s The Great Impersonator: Deluxe
• Daniel Avery’s Tremor (Deluxe)
• Rodrigo y Gabriela’s Rodrigo y Gabriela (20th Anniversary Deluxe)
• The Head And The Heart’s The Head And The Heart (15th Anniversary Deluxe)
• Godsmack’s Live At Mohegan Sun
• Eagles’ One Of These Nights (Deluxe Edition)
• Public Circuit’s R//MIX//S
• HEALTH’s ADDENDUM EP
• No Peeling’s EP2
• Jenny On Holiday’s Quicksand Heart – Excess Baggage EP
• Church Chords’ Apophatic Melismatic (The Schlager Remix EP +3)
• ONE OK ROCK’s Live From DETOX JAPAN TOUR 2025 EP
• Casper Sage’s Patina EP
• Luca Longobardi’s Tempo Fugit EP
• ugly ozo’s Dive EP
• Pictoria Vark’s Live At TNK EP
• VCTMS’ Pain Processing II EP
• Smarm’s Smarm EP
• Laura Cahen’s Side By Side EP
• Austin Snell’s Colors EP
• Morning Silk’s Have A Nice Life EP
• Tomorrow Woman’s Plays Machines EP
• MLEKO’s Feast Of St Perpetua EP
• face of ancient gallery’s Like Kites EP
• Paris WYA’s MANNEQUIN EP
• People I’ve Met’s Bunny EP
• Easy Honey’s Plaid EP
• TWS’ NO TRAGEDY Mini Album
