Time doesn’t soften the jagged. Over a decade since their last full-length, northern Virginia’s Drugs Of Faith claw back into the fray with Asymmetrical, a third LP that doesn’t so much arrive as detonate.
Ten tracks, twenty-one minutes—grindcore’s brevity sharpened into a shiv, wielded by guitarist/vocalist richard johnson, bassist ivan khilko, and drummer ethan griffiths. Out February 21st via Selfmadegod Records and Malokul, this isn’t a reunion or a nostalgia scrape; it’s a seething ledger of humanity’s inevitable slide, etched in riffs and blastbeats.
The band is guitarist and vocalist Richard Johnson (Enemy Soil, Agoraphobic Nosebleed), bassist Ivan Khilko (Immanent Voiceless), and drummer Ethan Griffiths (Embra).
The trio’s “grind & roll”—rock and punk torqued through a meat grinder—lands as a deranged prophecy, a sound kevin bernsten, who tracked it at Developing Nations, calls “a deranged rock album.” He’s not wrong.
The album’s marrow lies in its refusal to cohere neatly. Asymmetrical isn’t tethered to a single manifesto; it sprawls, jagged and unrepentant, across themes of control, collapse, and the slow rot of power. Some riffs predate the pandemic, others festered in lockdown’s murk, but all share a blunted fury, a sonic middle finger to any hope of symmetry in a world off its hinges. Johnson, a vet of enemy soil and agoraphobic nosebleed, admits a rare candor: “I’m one of those few that is interested in reactions to the music.” No pandering here—just a gauntlet thrown, daring you to flinch.
The band’s track-by-track rundown unspools like a field report from a warzone of sound and intent.
Opening
This was spontaneous in the studio. I had an idea of starting the record but didn’t know how to do it. I hit the strings on the bass and Ivan made noise out of it, and then Kevin Bernsten, who recorded us, put an ending on it later. I like how it turned out: kind of an announcement that the record’s starting.
Desert War Eternal
J.R. had a few songs that were too political for Pig Destroyer. I took two of them and put them together. I had a power violence/grindcore side project with a couple of guys, and I’ve been pinching riffs I wrote from it for Drugs of Faith for a while, and this song has some of that in it.
Drones
This one has a couple of song ideas from an Enemy Soil song that never came out. The song doesn’t really sound like that band anymore after I changed the riffs enough, but the seed is still there. The lyrics are pretty straight forward, maybe the most like that on the record.
Microchip
Both “Microchip” and “Divestment” have bass riffs from Ivan in them. We did a lyric video for “Microchip” and we play this one live. It made sense to put these two songs next to each other on the record.
Divestment
Lyrically, I have this thing going on with several of the songs where there’s more than one subject in the lyrics, but in my head they’re connected. “Divestment” has a few things to say about oligarchs, which is a hot topic right now on the political left in the United States. When I wrote the song, the U.S. presidential election hadn’t happened yet.
Gas Mask
We did a visualizer video for this one. This song has a strong Killing Joke influence to it. It’s got kind of a Discordance Axis influence in the middle.
The Void
You have to have a song with a “da-na na-na-na” riff in it, and there’s several of those on the record, but this one’s got kind of a twisted version of that.
The Next 100 Years
We worked on this song a lot to try to get it to flow right. It wasn’t easy to get how I was going to approach singing it either. It’s got some trademark Drugs of Faith bass/guitar interplay in it, I think.
Essential
DrDoom was great and I always liked this song, so I was happy with the guys agreed to cover it. I think it fits in with what we’re trying to do in general.
Conspiratorial
I went back and forth on whether this should be an instrumental or not, but in the end the groove in it stands on its own. Or I hope it does.
At its core, Asymmetrical is about fracture—lyrical, sonic, existential. No grand thesis, just snapshots of a future that’s already here, bleak and unblinking. Metal Injection dubbed it “an aural fucking beating,” and it is: a dense, volatile slab of rock-punk-grind that doesn’t beg for your approval. Fourteen years since Corroded, six since the Decay EP, Drugs Of Faith don’t coast on legacy. They weaponize it. A noise track, an instrumental, a cover—like Corroded, sure—but the production’s sharper, the angles weirder. Stream it early on Metal Injection, snag the grey vinyl (100 copies) from Malokul, or the CD from Selfmadegod. They’ll hit Rhizome DC on February 28th with witch’s mirror and stygian mind. More dates loom.
This isn’t comfort food. It’s a mirror, cracked and smudged, reflecting a world too far gone to fix. Dive into the full track-by-track below if you want the guts laid bare. Asymmetrical doesn’t care if you like it—just that you hear it.
