Reeling the Liars In

Where "A Screw" applies downward pressure, "Reeling the Liars In" applies it horizontally, like a slow crush from both sides. The track moves at the pace of something predatory and patient — percussion that lands like hammer blows with cathedral reverb between each strike, giving the listener just enough space to dread what comes next. Gira's vocal is at its most prosecutorial here, each syllable enunciated with a kind of controlled fury that suggests he has been waiting a long time to say this, has rehearsed it, and intends to be understood. The guitars don't riff; they accumulate, layering abrasion until the texture becomes almost granular. What the song is really doing is enacting its own title — the music itself behaves like a net being drawn tighter. Lyrically it confronts social performance and dishonesty with contempt that has passed through anger and arrived at something colder. It belongs to the same early industrial-noise lineage as the first Einstürzende Neubauten records and early Throbbing Gristle, music that weaponizes repetition as critique. This is a song for the moment when you have finally seen through something — a person, a system, a set of comfortable illusions — and the clarity brings no relief whatsoever.