Anyone who grew up with The Downward Spiral in their ears, smashed something while listening to early Deftones, or danced in anger to a Fear Factory remix cannot stay indifferent to Slug It Out. Leo Luchini takes the noise and tension of that world — industrial, nu-metal, contaminated drum’n’bass — and reshapes it for the present. Not out of nostalgia, but out of urgency. He doesn’t just quote: he collects, processes, re-launches. Slug It Out rides the renewed interest in these aesthetics (see Linkin Park’s revival, Architects’ comeback) yet finds its own voice: recognizable, personal.
Luchini builds eleven tracks that sound like lucid delirium: fever and memory, sweat and silence. Roots stretch into Reznor’s strained vocal delivery, Korn’s torn-down walls, Deftones’ dirty melancholy, the aggressive BPMs of the most toxic drum’n’bass (remember Pitchshifter?). It’s an album that pulses and screams, but knows stasis too.
Extinct Instinct and Off The Leash hit straight in the gut: they avoid balance, they choose fracture. Full Moon Fallen changes skin, opening into an acoustic fragility that doesn’t soothe, but exposes. Luchini never forces his voice: it snakes, infects. It’s confessional and unsettling. An open wound that refuses to heal.
Slug It Out is end-of-the-world music. But instead of merely evoking its aesthetics, Luchini inhabits them — and drags us along. This isn’t revival. It’s resistance.