“Hallucinations,” the latest offering from Washington, D.C.-based Rock trio Soul Meets Body, is an unrelenting anthem that burns with intensity and refuses to be silenced. The song is an emphatic return for the group and a bold leap into a charged new era.
Soul Meets Body has been making its own way since 2022, releasing a succession of self-released singles, but “Hallucinations” is an evolution. Joining forces for the first time with producer and mixer Orion Redwolf (Kendall Street Company, Eloise Granville), the band leverages their post-pandemic clarity and collective firepower to produce their most raw, primal work.
Recorded at Go West Recording in Richmond, VA, “Hallucinations” pulses with a sense of immediacy right from the very start. The song does not dawdle, as a pounding rhythm supports stabbing, racing guitars that explode into anthemic choruses, and the lead vocal, by turns furious and fragile, crackles with electric tension. It’s raw. It’s restless. And it hits hard.
“Hallucinations” are fundamentally about perception or, more precisely, the miscalculations of others. It’s a rock ‘n’ roll call to arms for the wild at heart, a raucous and emboldening anthem for those taking up space in the world, making a memory they will hold forever. It’s the sound of a band preposterously accelerating into an unpredictable future, both sonically and personally. The result is The Menzingers’ most raw, direct, and dare we say ‘delicate’ album to date, with songs that bleed straight from a broken heart. It’s a song that dismantles the boxes through its explosive soundscape and does that with unapologetic confidence.
What is most striking, though, is the cohesion. “Hallucinations” is a statement. The first song the band wrote when they got back, in the wake of post-lockdowns, “Hallucinations,” feels like letting go of something for too long held back. And with Redwolf’s production tightening the screws rather than sanding down the edge, the outcome is a song that swings with intent.