Model/Actriz are one of those bands who seem to emerge fully formed. The American quartet, active since the late 2010s, honed for years an aesthetic where the most abrasive noise rock meets the nervy tension of post-punk and the pulse of club music. Dogsbody, their debut album, crystallises this alchemy into a work as menacing as it is magnetic.
The critics (an 84 average across nine reviews) hailed the power of a singular proposition, carried by the hypnotic presence of singer Cole Haden. His voice, by turns murmured, declaimed and screamed, deploys a troubling eroticism and a theatricality that evoke the great figures of post-punk without ever imitating them.
Musically, the record advances along a knife-edge. The guitars grate and lacerate, the rhythm hammers a near-danceable pulse, the whole bathes in a permanent tension, at once industrial and carnal. Model/Actriz make an art of discomfort, transforming sonic aggression into a strangely sensual experience.
This choice of continuous tension can also exhaust: Dogsbody almost never loosens its grip, and that sustained intensity verges at moments on monotony. One would sometimes have wished for a few breathing spaces, a sharper contrast. But the immersion, once accepted, is total.
Verdict: 8.5/10. A fascinating, unsettling debut that establishes Model/Actriz as one of the most singular voices in contemporary abrasive rock.
