Sex Prisoner have always been outliers in the powerviolence scene. Since their early days, they resisted the ultra-speed violence the genre is associated with. Instead, they looked both backwards toward hardcore punk’s rhythmic foundations and outward toward the crushing weight of sludge and metallic extremity. The result was a series of short, aggressive bursts that carried a weight and attitude not usually found in powerviolence. The epitome of this practice was 2016’s Tannhäuser Gate, a masterful work that encapsulates Sex Prisoner‘s vision. A decade later, they return with Cautionary Tale, refining rather than reinventing their formula.
Sex Prisoner’s success has always stemmed from their ability to create structural contrast and move naturally between contrasting ideas. Take a track like “Built for Speed” for example. The start clearly recalls Dropdead’s extreme practices, as lightning-fast blastbeats combine with angular riffs to cause complete havoc. At this point everything is a blur, and what remains is neither structure nor hooks, but a primal sense of violence. Just a few seconds into the song, everything changes. The momentum shifts from lightning-fast to glacial; the frantic guitar work becomes well-defined, heavy riffs, more akin to sludge than powerviolence.
These transitions, from powerviolence to sludge, or from sludge into traditional D-beat as on “Falling Down”, might seem incidental. Still, they eventually become the album’s defining compositional principle. Throughout the record, these shifts don’t feel like stylistic detours, but necessary changes that maximize the work’s physicality.
Taken together, Sex Prisoner’s rhythmic shifts create an unpredictable landscape, and they apply more adventurous ideas to make this experience even more unstable. To that end, they move closer to feedback-sculpting territory, where their sludge foundation crumbles into a restrained drone, as in the ending of “Wildcat House”. Here they move closer to Man Is the Bastard, and their further tampering with noise and sweeping sound effects in “Feelin’ Low Down” augments the harrowing core of Cautionary Tale.
They also weave brief tremolo-picked passages between these heavier sections. These parts borrow from black metal’s tremolo-picked aesthetic, giving tracks like “Glass Worms” a very different aftertaste. Both these aspects, noise and black metal, showcase Sex Prisoner’s creative depths, and their willingness to keep pushing into new directions.
Still, Cautionary Tale isn’t trying to innovate beyond what Sex Prisoner has done in the past. Sonically, it remains remarkably close to Tannhäuser Gate, following the same structural logic and projecting the same overwhelming physicality. Yet, the result is astounding. Rather than expanding their vision, Cautionary Tale improves on it. The transitions between powerviolence, hardcore and sludge are cleaner, each shift landing with maximum impact. The heavy production and the drone, noise, and blackened components hit even harder. The result is a record that shows musicians with complete mastery over their craft.