The Armed - The Future Is Here And Everything Needs To Be Destroyed (Album Review)
Tuesday, 05 August 2025
Written by Maddy Howell
Photo: Luke Nelson
Few bands claim chaos as convincingly as The Armed, and fewer still deliver on its promise with such gleeful abandon. On their starkly titled sixth studio album, ‘The Future Is Here And Everything Needs To Be Destroyed’, the Detroit-based experimental hardcore collective tap into their most primal instincts, shaking off the sleek pop sheen of 2023’s ‘Perfect Saviors’ and diving headfirst into outrage, exhaustion, and mayhem.
Clocking in at just over 30 minutes, there’s little point in searching for a grand artistic thesis here. Basking in violent exhilaration, there’s no complex narrative thread binding these 11 tracks, just scorched-earth immediacy. Raising a middle finger to a world teetering on the edge before giving a defeated shrug as it plummets into nothingness, this is about as hopeless as it gets.
The bleak tone is set with opener Well Made Play, a searing blast of noise-rock that entwines guttural hardcore howls with disorienting saxophone segments, while Purity Drag layers its punk roots with distortion, culminating in pained gang vocals that feel unshakeably desperate: “There is something wrong / Nothing is my fault.”
The Armed’s signature experimental disorder is in full swing on Kingbreaker, a two-minute sprint that barrels forward with outsized swagger and piercing screams courtesy of Punch's Meghan O'Neil. The razor-sharp assault of Grace Obscure and the industrial hum of Broken Mirror cut from the same cloth, but Sharp Teeth and I Steal What I Want twist the formula.
The album’s most melodic cuts, they offer glimmers of the collective’s penchant for pop songcraft, complete with dreamy vocal harmonies and earworm hooks. If there’s one thing you can be certain of when it comes to The Armed, though, it’s that they’ll never settle in one space for long.
Coming full circle in its closing moments, Heathen rounds things out with a glitchy synth-pop cut laced with sax, while A More Perfect Design brings an urgent, mathcore-tinged descent into doom.
‘The Future Is Here And Everything Needs To Be Destroyed’ is an album that toys with the idea of attempting to fix things but ultimately decides we’re better off just watching it all burn. Often ridiculous and always hard to digest, it’s not the easiest of listens, but there are few bands capable of harnessing life’s contradictions so vividly, capturing a beautiful snapshot of overstimulation and disassociation in the modern age.
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