Album Review: Candy – It’s Inside You (Relapse Records)

Candy return with their new album, ‘It’s Inside You’, via Relapse Records on June 7th. A brazen take on hardcore, metal, disparate electronics and experimental soundscapes, ‘It’s Inside You’ sees Candy take another step forward with a compelling, extreme, and one-of-a-kind take on the genre.

The word ‘experimental’, in musical terms, was created for bands like Candy. A band who offer up a maddening blend of hardcore, metal, industrial, EDM, and so much more. You don’t listen to Candy, you experience them, and this new album is the group at their height of their experimental powers.

Beginning with an absolute mess of a track, eXistenZ is undeniably extreme, and strangely addictive. It helps that it’s only 81 seconds long, giving it tons of replay value, but even still, it’s how many different things are going on in it, that will bring you back time and time again.

Love it, hate it, it’s Candy, and they’re only getting started.

The first of several guests, Aaron Melnick joins Candy on Short-Circuit, a track that has Candy showing off some hardcore leg. It’s cheeky, but it is intense, all because of a blistering combo of throat-tearing roars and crunching drumbeats. Then Justice Tripp comes along to help make You Will Never Get Me sound like one of the album’s most feral and primitive tracks. It has barely contained rage running through it like a thick vein, and while it holds a certain level of intensity throughout, it’s the breakdown that is truly disgusting.

Candy then teams up with David Gagliardi for a slice of emphatic heavy dissonance and MIRSY & mmph for a slab contrasting abrasiveness with the pairing of the title track and Love Like Snow. The former is downright dangerous sounding and pushes the experimentation to an even greater level, whereas the latter is discombobulating because of its poppy melody.

Both as uniquely Candy as they are addictively Candy.

A vibe that continues strongly into the belligerent savagery of Dehumanize Me, the thundering feral antics of Faith 91, the snarling and sneering garishness of Terror Management, and the monumentally heavy Dreams Less Sweet. Candy push the boundaries of heavy, experimental music to its limit, and then find a way to push it even further. This album is filled with such spectacular vitriol that it’s surprising desensitisation hasn’t set in by the latter stages.

That’s Candy for you though, surprising right up to the very end.

An end that comes with as much intensity as heard elsewhere. First, there’s a short blast of manic energy with Silent Collapse. Then, there’s the eccentricities of Dancing to the Infinite Beat, a track you can move to, even if the electronica elements and increasing mania of the track means it’s more akin to having a fit. Before one of 2024’s most distinctive album’s comes to a close with Hypercore, and like the title suggests, it’s freaking chaotic.

Candy have surpassed anything they have done in the past and set a very high bar for themselves going forward. As experimental as the album is, almost everything feels essential to making it such a special record.

Candy – It’s Inside You Track Listing:

1. eXistenZ
2. Short-Circuit (feat. Aaron Melnick)
3. You Will Never Get Me (feat. Justice Tripp)
4. It’s Inside You (feat. David Gagliardi)
5. Love Like Snow (feat. MIRSY & mmph)
6. Dehumanize Me
7. Faith 91
8. Terror Management
9. Dreams Less Sweet
10. Silent Collapse
11. Dancing to the Infinite Beat
12. Hypercore

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