Passing Stones by The Gallstones

If you’ve ever submerged yourself into a social media algorithm that subjected you to nothing but pain, with each post angering you or downright terrifying you, the music of Passing Stones by The Gallstones has you in mind. Viscous, bloody grindcore served on Spotify with a side dish of deadly car crash videos, the band’s style comes complete with their trademark glitchy vocal samples to bombard us with paranoid schizophrenia, obsessing over flashy yet shallow ideas, conspiratorial connections in the news, and the infinite gruesome ways our bodies can rupture. Rather than picking a side and joining in the violence or uselessly standing before this runaway train and yelling “stop,” The Gallstones furiously shovel coal into the locomotive, marveling at the swirling flames and billowing steam as they showcase the raw seductive power of the machine. With a post-ironic shrug and a painted-on smile, our shape-shifting narrator presents us with a scale model of mass culture, leaving us to judge the object as real or illusory, helpful or harmful, transitory or exponential.