Album review: Backxwash – HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING

As she revealed in this week's cover interview, the life of Ashanti Mutinta has involved challenges piled upon challenges: drugs, a strict, overbearing Christian upbringing, extreme depression, suicide, 'unlearning' old, terrifying taught values after moving to Canada from Zambia. The music of Backxwash is as fuelled by this abrasive subject matter as one might expect. Part hip-hop, occasionally touching industrial, all harsh, it's intensely cathartic stuff. “It’s therapy to me to get this stuff out," she told us. "And it’s much cheaper than therapy.”

On HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING, the closing third of a trilogy that started with 2020's God Has Nothing to Do with This Leave Him Out of It and continued on last year's I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES, there is no small amount of catharsis and fury. 'I need help, I'm possessed,' Ashanti screams on VIBANDA, while on MUZUNGU there's agitated talk of 'Watching this evil come out' over a stressful, haunting bass. But there's also resistance, defiance, that pops everything into fifth gear.

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Because things aren't already scalding enough, Brit grinders Pupil Slicer pop up to add extra heat to NYAMA. It's a dark, twisting song that sums up HIS HAPPINESS… as well as any; a crushing, violent act of sound that, somewhere along the line, catches wind and becomes almost euphoric.

Backxwash aren't the easiest proposition. This is extreme music heavy in both sound and content. But this is also part of the strength of the album. It is unflinching in its subject matter and depth of its darkness, just as it is unafraid to be exactly what it is. And that's something quite unlike anything else you'll hear in 2022.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Mimi Barks, FEVER 333, Pupil Slicer

HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING is out now