There’s something extra bleak and haunting about a strip mall on a dark night and the music video for ABBATIA’s “World Wide Web” begins there. Then we see a demented figure shaping features in clay on his own head as the band’s crew seems to be on web cam and security footage interspersed with scenes of horror like we’re getting a trip through parts of the dark web accompanied by throbbing, industrial hip-hop beats and rapping that is both frantic and sepulchral in a way that is at times so intense it borders on the humorous. That is if the whole video and didn’t feel like a gnarly segment of the V/H/S franchise with music that is a fascinating collage of mashups that defy narrow classification. It’s in the hip-hop vein but you’d have to be into the more avant-garde or experimental end of that music to find something comparable. Maybe Ho99o9, Dälek or Death Grips but it’s not much like any of those, just the level of genre bending and inventive soundscaping that is more focused on creating a harrowing and menacing mood informed by a sense of the absurd rather than where it fits on a spectrum of musical style. Watch the video for “World Wide Web” on YouTube and follow ABBATIA at the links below. The group’s new album, the appropriately titled Red Room, dropped on November 11, 2022.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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