March 7, 2025

Album Review - Intensive Care & The Body "Was I Good Enough?"

Collaborative records have become a more prevalent practice over the last decade or so, thanks to bands like Full of Hell and The Body who have kind of made it a thing that they do. Such creative hybrids are captivating for open minded metalheads in and of themselves, but the sheer surprise of who-the-hell-my-favorite-bands-are-gonna-collaborate-next is also a lot of fun to speculate on.

Full of Hell and The Body collaborate so much that they collaborated with one another in 2017, creating a wonderful thirty-five minute mindfuck called Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light.

The Body has a new collaboration on the way with Canadian duo Intensive Care. Their name might be unfamiliar, but one half of Intensive Care has released a collaborative record with Full of Hell last november. I have no idea how to qualify their sound, but imagine that Godflesh sounded the way they sound because they had a disease, right? Well, Intensive Care sounds as if that disease was terminal. It’s trudging, predatory and unashamedly glitchy digital music. I would classify them as industrial for lack of a better word.

Was I Good Enough? features eight songs and a little over thirty five minutes of music that sounds like you’re having sleep paralysis at a dentist’s office in hell and I mean that in the most praiseful way. I believe it is exactly what they were going for.

It’s more difficult to review a record like Was I Good Enough? and talking in specific terms because you never know what’s what and what’s just the deformed sound of another instrument filtered through layers of digital effects, but two things captivated me. One, the cohesiveness of the drumming on every track. Whether it’s real or electronic (I’m pretty sure both are present on the record), they follow similar patterns and a somewhat of a steady pace from track to track, heightening the impression that something terrible is about to incessantly happen. Was I Good Enough? sounds inevitable. It’s the soundtrack to existential fatality.

The other is the amazing coexistence of The Body’s Chip King’s trademark….uh, hellacious chirps for lack of a better word (if you’ve listened to The Body before, you know what I mean) and the spoken word, power electronics-esque vocals that I believe come from Intensive Care. Put together, they sound like a man on the brink of losing his mind and the immutable demon that possesses him. I’m normally not a fan of the train whistle vocals in The Body’s work, but somehow they found the right aesthetic context on Was I Good Enough?

My favorite song on the record is the almost eleven minutes long closer Mandelbrot Anamnesis (what can I say, I love long songs), which is also the most abstract and disarticulated piece on the record. The loops of negative self talks that go one for minutes, the ghoulish keyboards, the dueling vocals and the harsh noise wallesque outro create such a desolate, but powerful atmosphere, implying there’s strength to be found in surrendering to oblivion. That inside the dark, most primal part of your psyche lies your destruction and your salvation. This song is a masterpiece of experimental fuckery that only the most liberated and creative mind could access.

The opened Mistakes Have Been Made is another highlight of Was I Good Enough? It’s one where the parallel with Godflesh is easy to make. I love the overblown, disincarnate guitar riffs that feel both scary and brittle, lost in this ocean of digital effects. The drumming is precise and ominous. Swallowed By The God features these distorted air horn-like sounds and what I think is The Body’s Lee Buford obsessive drum performance that is highlighted by punishing cymbal work. It’s a shorter, simpler song that only features the chirped vocals that feeds into fatalistic and obsessive themes of the record.

The Misunderstanding is a glitchy, overwhelming Babel tower of digital effects and ominous pacing where every kick drum somehow sounds like a nuclear bomb detonating. It’s getting hard and harder to think straight under all this ominous weight, but I believe it’s by design. at death’s door is another step forward towards the collapsing of mind. It marks the point where Was I Good Enough? becomes more abstract and desolate. There’s a long instrumental segment in the middle where only synth is played before restructuring itself into a more conventional terminal Godflesh industrial metal song at the end.

The second single The Riderless Mount is one of my favorite songs on Was I Good Enough? I love the spare (but somehow maximalist If that’s possible?) that lets the song breathe and build up tension. It’s one of the simplest songs on the record, but it’s one the most impactful. If I had to sell this album using one song, it would be this one. I love Cartography of Suffering too, with its slow, Sunn O)))-like guitar riffs and shambolic, jazzy drum performance. It’s one of the most unique pieces, with its accelerated tempo and jagged structure.

Unwanted is very much a prelude to Mandelbrot Anamnesis. I’m not even sure what to say about it outside that it’s minimalistic approach to vocals and, once again, out-of-the-box drumming make it feel alive in a way only the monsters inside your head can be.

Was I Good Enough? is a challenging listen, but it’s never openly obtuse or hostile to its audience. It’s the soundtracks of a mind collapsing under its own weight. Of conflicting demons colonizing a human soul. You’ll get the same thrills from it that you’ll get from an artsy horror movie as you’re experiencing real fear and concerns from an outside voice (therefore a safe place). This new collaboration between The Body and Intensive Care is not going to be for every ears, but if you knew these bands already, you know they never were.

It’s coming out on March 14th from the good people at Closed Casket Activities and it is not for the meek.

If you like what Ben does and want to hear him talk about books and movies too, follow his site Dead End Follies on Twitter and Instagram.

Album Review - Intensive Care & The Body "Was I Good Enough?"

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