Slaughterhouse

The title track of the *Slaughterhouse* album — recorded with Ty Segall Band rather than solo — announces its collaborative energy immediately. The rhythm section here is more prominent, the drums and bass functioning as a genuine foundation rather than just backdrop, giving the track a tightness that some of Segall's solo work deliberately avoids. The song moves through several distinct phases, the dynamics shifting between quieter passages that feel genuinely ominous and explosive sections where everything cracks open at once. There's a proto-metal quality to some of the riffing, the guitar work channeling early Black Sabbath as much as it does the Stooges, the notes chosen for their weight rather than their speed. Thematically, the title evokes brutality and industry in equal measure, the music itself embodying something machine-like in its relentlessness. Segall's voice here is rawer than usual, pushed past its comfortable range in places, and this strain becomes part of the song's emotional argument — the sense that the performance is costing something. This is the album track that rewards the listener who has sat with the album as a whole, who understands where the song sits in a larger sequence and how it functions as a kind of culmination. Best heard loud, ideally in a room with no windows.