Style: Nu-metal, Djent (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Slipknot, very early Karnivool, Limp Bizkit, Amaranthe
Country: New Zealand
Release date: 6 December 2024
While it is often hard to believe in serendipity, it’s quite easy to believe in the Infinite Monkey Theorem and all of its graces: enough apes in a room bashing on typewriters will eventually write a profound work. In a similar vein, get enough people on Earth and humanity will produce a Tommy Wiseau to exact a fully committed and profoundly cringe vision, creating works like The Room, Best F(r)iends, and The Neighbors in the process. Get even more people on Earth and a community will develop around niche media like this, which is where I come in: I have been graced to be part of a group that opens discourse on underground progressive works good and bad. My dear co-writer Chris was kind1 enough to introduce me to We Are the Future, the latest release from Kiwi nu-metal outfit Kaosis and a work of camp, absurdity, and cringe only possible thanks to the Infinite Monkey Theorem. I urge you to take some time and explore with me this brain rot-inducing labor of love.
You’ve heard Kaosis before: maybe not directly, but their style of nu-metal was done to death in the early 2000s, and now that the requisite two decades have passed for it to be considered nostalgic, Kaosis are mercilessly yanking it back into existence and forcing it to dance like a dreadlocked homunculus in JNCOs. All the ingredients to conjure such an unearthly creature are there: a philosopher’s stone forged from Slipknot’s cutting room floor riffs (“Breaking the Fallen”), a vessel overflowing with djent grooves that can be most warmly described as ‘characteristic of the genre’ (“Blood of Angels”), and the blood of Fred Durst to top it all off (“God Inside”). Most tracks feature verses with harsh vocals over featureless riffs that lead into a clean-sung chorus and a bridge containing a guitar solo with varying degrees of interest. Soloing seems to be the central focus of We Are the Future’s sound, as very little else save for the occasional bongo interjection (“Human Tumour,” “Arrival of the Fittest”) and an interesting drum pattern or two (“See! See! I Told You Baby!”) leave anything to sink your teeth into.
However, the music itself is not the main focus here: frankly, the experience rarely moves beyond exceedingly bland and forgettable nu-metal with the occasional five-second snippet of intrigue. The real attraction is the series of music videos accompanying each track, like Daft Punk’s Interstella 5555 but worse in every way, featuring a wildly diverse and utterly unhinged cast of characters such as:
- A trailer pagan ready to sing Peyton Parrish to you on your way to Y’allhalla;
- Scorpion from Mortal Kombat on bass;
- Your mom’s friend Leroy on drums;
- A giant dog responsible for keyboard duties and hype poses;
- Dril on guitars, eternally encased in a flaming blue aura;
- and 75 of their closest friends2, including special guests Björn Strid of Soilwork, Anders Colsefni of Slipknot3, and several notable appearances from mysterious second drummer Bongo Jimmy.
Special attention must be brought to the two women featured in each video who do nothing but dance; I can only assume they are sorceresses coercing the other band members out of whatever hell dimensions they came from onto this plane of existence. Typically, the visual media of a band is mostly irrelevant to the musical content itself, but in the case of We Are the Future’s strong sense of, um, imagery along with the inclusion of two members who do literally nothing but dance, Kaosis make it clear that the aesthetics of their art are mandatory for the full experience.
Each video follows a similar format—we are thrown into some kind of apocalyptic cyberpunk landscape, the camera zooms in to the band, and we are subjected to four minutes of random cuts between each band member along with hologram projections of the guest musicians. The first video is the most frantic with several cuts and excessive camera shake effects, featuring snapshots of a CG cybernetic woman who… just kind of sits there wired up to a bunch of machines? Maybe the music videos are being downloaded into her brain to develop consciousness? It reminds me of when Microsoft released that Twitter bot that was instantly corrupted by the internet, but instead of being fed racism, the cyborg is being fed someone’s fever dream of an ICP opening act. She is never seen again after the first video, meaning we’ve either fully sunken into her consciousness or the band blew their budget on the opener’s edge-of-your-seat CG cinematography.
Other notable moments include the non-sequitur t-rex cameo at the end of “Human Tumour”; the entirety of “God Inside” being inexplicably filmed in a 1:1 aspect ratio topped off with ten seconds of the guest vocalist shifting back and forth like an NPC idle animation at its end; or the multiple instances of members playing their instruments with absolutely no sound, such as the drummer powerfully nailing a tom fill that doesn’t exist on “Memory Never Dies” or the flame-aura guitarist silently shredding while one of the women stands and stares awkwardly at the camera at the end of “See! See! I Told You Baby!” The bridge of opening track “Breaking the Fallen” is particularly apt, as a deluge of camera switches and random zoom-ins of band members’ hands and faces is met by chants of “I can’t take this” over and over. Yeah, you and me both, sister.4
Such baffling descriptors will naturally lead one to thinking of silliness poster children Gloryhammer, who revel in camp and absurdity. However, their approach involves everyone being in on a larger joke, taking the piss out of its own low-effort storytelling, and any narrative depth Gloryhammer tries to attain is rendered hollow in the process due to its reliance on irony. The Kaosis approach, on the other hand, fully eschews irony, coming from a place of true earnestness: messages about the state of the world delivered through Steven Hawking voice samples, a desire for a cool image, and a point of view that tells people that you’ve thought once or twice about, like, society and stuff permeate We Are the Future. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that they aren’t completely convinced of themselves: the fact that there is a dog person behind a giant holographic man urgently yelling “If you ask me, it affects everything! IT AFFECTS EVERYTHING!” at the end of “Over This” makes a strong case for Kaosis’ unwavering conviction to what they’re saying, whether it be worth hearing or not.
We Are the Future is an all-encompassing experience for the worst, from the green-screened Mortal Kombat backdrops to the wildly divergent designs of each band member to the absolutely punishing deluge of guest musicians, all coalescing in a fever dream cyberpunk dumpster fire backdropped by tepid nu-metal that offers little of interest in any respect. And yet, through the dumpster fire, I come out the other side with a profound hope, as We Are the Future is a representation of the unwavering commitment of an artist to their vision: the end product is horrifically unpleasant to listen to and tasteless trash, but it is trash that’s only possible from a group that pours their entire heart and soul into a project, a beautiful microcosm of the human condition that mirrors the grandeur found in us all. For that reason, I wouldn’t change a single thing about We Are the Future: it’s perfect the way it is. That, or the sorceresses have cursed me with enzymes that are accelerating my brain rot—It’s hard to tell.5
Recommended tracks: Just go watch the video, it’s the only way to properly consume this
You may also like: Four Stroke Baron, Max Enix, Doodseskader, Sarcas
Final verdict: Flaming blue aura/10
Related links: Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Independent
Kaosis is:
– Xen (vocals, production, nightmare mastermind)
– A bunch of other unlisted people
– Bongo Jimmy
- Read: sadistic ↩︎
- Seriously, We Are the Future has so many pointless guest musicians that it puts Folkearth and Max Enix to shame. ↩︎
- Colsefni’s inclusion here is particularly interesting, given the drama between him and Kaosis: apparently, Colsefni re-recorded Slipknot’s Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. with the band, but later denounced the release as many post-recording decisions, including release details and mastering, were made without him, suggesting that his contributions to We Are the Future were made before the release of this EP. ↩︎
- Kaosis’ crimes against music don’t stop here—just weeks before the release of We Are the Future, Kaosis dropped an AI-generated music video that self-inserts them into a set from Woodstock ‘99, featuring an all-new song with such faff lyrics that I thought those were also AI-generated. ↩︎
- My peer Andy says it’s almost certainly the latter. ↩︎
