By: Aniruddh Nambudiri

Sister albums are fun. They always add to the worlds that music can build, and I feel that aspect of them is at both their positive and negative side. The negatives are simply the feeling that they can be a bit derivative. When the new M.otherthing project came out and simply had the bottom line of the ‘older, tortured sister’ of the previous release from 2025, I was definitely interested. With all those previous thoughts on sister albums, however, this project is definitely its own beast. A more calculated and cinematic monster, a bit more reserved, but a lot louder in its moments of rage. 

The start of this project is a lot more atmospheric than anything in the previous project. It is almost like the waiting period you get on some crazy grindcore projects (particularly thinking about the one on Hiss by Singapore-based band Wormrot that genuinely made me break a pair of glasses because of how spooked I was). Just like those other waiting periods, though, the album then bursts through with the song ‘amphetamine’. When the last project was shining its influences and roots in places like Sasscore and mathcore, this is the cybergrind project. You also get a bit of Downward Spiral era Nine Inch Nails to boot. The overwhelming noise and the hi-hats that sound like a chorus of cicadas at points in a song like ‘dd dddd’ definitely add to the cybergrind of it all, too. You also get full-on noise on songs like the closer ‘deerGrrl’ and the second half of Supersonic I’. You also get callbacks to the sound of the previous record with ‘fybm’ and ‘fantastic death’

The surprise, though, is the amount of melody that shines through. The second version of ‘supersonic’ on this project is filled with even more atmosphere, and the second half of this project has melodies that harken back to some of the more underrated artists from PC Music. It’s a massive surprise and a welcome one, honestly, when contrasted with the noise being even harsher than the last project. What this sister album is, in the end, is a step forward when it comes to the overall vision that the first project was. The blend between previous projects like Sonic Daphne and Supercritical. Both coming together into something very new that makes the artist today.