Stream industrial act Trace Amount's debut LP & read a track-by-track

Trace Amount is the industrial solo project of Brandon Gallagher (also of Coarse and other bands), and after a few years of putting out EPs, singles, and various collaborations, he now releases his debut full-length album Anti Body Language this Friday (4/15) via Federal Prisoner, the label run by former Dillinger Escape Plan vocalist Greg Puciato and visual artist Jesse Draxler (pre-order).

Brandon co-produced the album with Faid Kainer, aka Statiqbloom, who also guests on closing track “Suspect,” and it was mixed by Uniform‘s Ben Greenberg. Industrial pop artist KANGA sings on a track (“Tone and Tenor”) too. The album is abrasive, caustic, and emotionally taxing throughout, but Brandon’s also got a more accessible side underneath all the noise. If you can picture the exact middle ground between The Downward Spiral and the death industrial/power electronics scene, this album might be it.

Anti Body Language isn’t officially out until tomorrow, but we’re premiering a full stream in this post, alongside a track-by-track breakdown by Brandon. Listen and read on for what he had to say…

TRACK-BY-TRACK BREAKDOWN BY BRANDON GALLAGHER

ANXIOUS AWAKENINGS

I wanted the album to start off with something really upbeat and catchy. Sort of an extension of what I did on the Alien Dust EP. As I began writing new material during quarantine – Alien Dust, and then eventually Anti Body Language… I knew that when shows returned I would want more percussion to play live so this track was definitely built with that in mind.

ANTI BODY LANGUAGE

I don’t always include a title track on my releases, but to me this one felt the most on with the whole concept of the album – musically and lyrically. It’s a single for sure. I tried to get real primal with the drum rhythms and not get too intricate, staying close to a pop structure. Conceptually this album / track have a few different meanings to me… expanding on the general concept that you can be so entwined with your web persona that you literally become Anti Body and exist as thoughts and ideas put out for the world to ingest, or when you’re back in real life your Body Language can be so misconstrued because we’ve been locked down and a lot of people were rusty on human to human interaction.

EVENTUALLY IT WILL KILL US ALL

I have been subjected to so many local news viewings growing up that I truly can’t stand the thought of cable news. During lock down it was kind of hard to avoid at times with how much insane shit was happening, but something always struck me, and that was all of the graphs and graphics and how they were designed to show the rising of Covid. It was always going up. It is always always bright red. It was always bold. They got more brutal and in your face about how we were not making any progress. With how fucking stupid and selfish our government is, these news stations really did a good job of making it seem like eventually you were going to get Covid and die… that is if the stress, anxiety, or starvation didn’t get you first. 28 Days Later vibes. The track is meant to feel a little dragged out to emulate that feeling.

DIGITIZED EXILE

When mixing this track Ben (Greenberg) really wanted to bring out vintage Eventide processors on the vocals. That’s one of my favorite aspects of working out of Circular Ruin – the massive arsenal of synths and processors, to make your tracks sound even sicker than they did before. You can literally hear my breaths being torn apart in distortion on some of the tracks. This track is a lot of fun to play live as well.

NO REALITY

This track was written about how split the world is, not even from a political perspective, but just based on reality and how you live your life. Being locked down in NYC, you saw it in an extremely polarizing way. Some people fled to their Hamptons homes, others wore literal hazmat suits on their commute to work weeks into the lockdown as essential employees, others literally just hung out in their preferred virtual reality. It’s a pretty heavy track so I had to put some heat behind the lyrics. It was also my goal to incorporate a breakdown somewhere on this record, and the ending of this track absolutely has one.

TONE AND TENOR

I am not musically inclined enough to blatantly rip off an artist, which I guess is a blessing and a curse haha, but this was my attempt to write a Nine Inch Nails style track. Something with a real bold structure, and I knew even before Kanga agreed to be on this track that I wanted an iconic guest on it. Greg (Puciato) knew her from a previous Black Queen tour so he hit her up and she was into it. Kanga’s synth lines and vocals truly took this song to another level.

PIXELATED PREMONITIONS

When I had sent Fade the Ableton session, it was pretty minimal. I wanted a four on the floor fist pumping track on the record, but I knew it needed some kind of melodic synth line to make it a little more dynamic. Ben was really pumped on this one and was responsible for that little melodic texture at the end of the track. Conceptually this track is about how much doom scrolling I did during the height of the lockdown and then I would have these insanely vivid but also hella confusing dreams in varying apocalyptic settings, where I’d wake up and be like holy fuck that was exhasuting.

SUSPECT

I was obsessed with Uncut Gems and even more so the soundtrack that Oneohtrix Point Never did. There’s a track on there called “Back To Roslyn” and I essentially wanted to make a harsh noise version of that… Shout out to Fade for really taking the lead on this one and nailing all the textures and saxophone lead.