Monster Florence has never played by the rules, and on the new track “Relax,” they’re not just testing them, but smashing them down. “Relax” is a high-octane, and downright addictive gut-punch to the senses that hits hard with raw energy and runs headfirst into a wall of sound that is as sinister as it is hypnotic. The instrumental slinks up on you like a shadow, ominous, undaunted, and chilling in the best way. There’s a palpable tension baked into the beat, simmering just underneath the surface and ready to erupt at any time. It’s a type of backbeat that supports lyrics and looms over them, nourishing them and challenging them to be tougher.
The rapping on “Relax” is a physical assault, frantic, fearless, and entirely magnetic. Monster Florence has always been razor sharp with a pen and more incendiary on the mic, this feels particularly feral. Its performance as possession, you can hear the teeth grinding behind the bars. Each verse cascades into the next like a verbal riot, chaotic but deliberate. Then, from the mayhem, there’s a voice that not only cuts through but also haunts. The punk-poet legend John Cooper Clarke offers up his unmistakable metre over the track, not as a trick but as an enchantment. His exclamations are ghostlike and prescient, their very presence lacing filth with a perverted sort of class.
It’s a partnership that somehow feels both organic and otherworldly, as though a séance were taking place in the sound booth. What “Relax” demonstrates is that Monster Florence continues to exist in a league of their own. While so many chase trends, they summon atmospheres. Others speak rebellion; they breathe it. Hardly a placid exercise, “Relax” is a wake-up call from one of the UK’s most electrifying posse cuts; a reminder that art, when unharnessed, can still attack your system.