Jeff Rosenstock makes increasingly chaotic albums for an increasingly chaotic world. With each
passing year, it feels like the temperature of the universe boils five degrees hotter, and with each
new album, Rosenstock’s music grows more unwieldy and
lawless. Louder, faster, more feral.
Which brings us to 2023
—
a planet on fire, a mere 90 seconds to midnight on the doomsday
clock, and the release of Rosenstock’s appropriately titled, anarchic record,
HELLMODE
.
“To me, the album feels like the chaos of being alive right now,” Rosenstock says
of
HELLMODE
. “We’re experiencing all these things at the same time that trigger our senses,
and emotions that make us feel terrible. We’re just feeling way too much all at once!” But for all
its textured turmoil, there are also surprising glimpses of clarity and grac
e to be found
in
HELLMODE
, when Rosenstock deliberately slows things down in places that are prettier and
more delicate, rare moments of shelter in the storm. Whic
h only makes it more rewarding when
these moments unexpectedly unravel and spiral back into extreme, manic chaos, like abruptly
being flung into a Nintendo game on level 99.
HELLMODE
marks the fifth studio album the prolific Rosenstock has released in the last ten
years under his own name, following the dissolution of his beloved cult projects Bomb the Music
Industry! and The Arrogant Sons of Bitches. Also tucked into his rapidly expa
nding catalog is a
live record, a ska reimagining of his 2020 album
NO DREAM
, and various dumps of stray songs
and loose singles. And somewhere on the side, he has found time to score the Emmy
–
nominated
animated series
Craig of the Creek
.
Rosenstock’s rising profile and critical acclaim over the last decade have been something of an
anomaly. He’s a proud torchbearer of the punk sonics, aesthetics, and ethos of his youth, leaning
into pop punk and ska sensibilities that were deemed Decidedly
Uncool by the gatekeepers of
the time. (On any given day at a big outdoor music festival, he is likely the only musician who
will bust out a saxophone solo.) But when Rosenstock celebrates these styles, he somehow ends
up getting praise from tastemakers a
nd landing on prominent year
–
end lists. Maybe it’s because
his appreciation doesn’t feel like cheap nostalgia or surface
–
level cosplay. Everything he does is
just so damned sincere.
That success is something Rosenstock has been conflicted about, and fuels some of the anxiety
that runs through
HELLMODE
. “It’s weird feeling success at the worst possible time, while the
world falls apart,” he says. “These things I’ve been unintentionally working towards for the last
two decades have come to fruition now, when everything is on fire.”
To record
HELLMODE
in the summer of 2022, Rosenstock once again enlisted his longtime
studio collaborator, Jack Shirley, the Grammy
–
nominated master of heaviness who has recorded
all of Rosenstock’s studio albums. But this time, they took a slightly more ambitious approach,
booking time at the legendary EastWest Studios in Hollywood. They recorded to tape in Studio
2, the same hallowed ground where System of a Down recorded
Toxicity
, and where Whitney
Houston laid down vocal tracks for
The Bodyguard
soundtr
ack. The newfound studio resources
produced the biggest and most expansive Jeff Rosenstock record to date.