★★★★☆
Ashnikko trims off some of the excess of her 2021 DEMIDEVIL mixtape on a debut album that puts her in her lover era, writes Lucy Harbron. Read our Weedkiller review.“Am I fuckable enough for you?” Spat out through gritted teeth, that’s the major question of Ashnikko’s debut record, WEEDKILLER. The follow up to her 2021 mixtape DEMIDEVIL, the tone of it all has shifted. Previously making a name for herself through hypersexual lyricism and unbridled rage on tracks like ‘Daisy’ or the mega-viral ‘Slumber Party’, WEEDKILLER turns the gaze outward and glares at fame, daring it to try and put Ashnikko in a box or limit her to just a hot pop girl. Instead, this Ashnikko is just an image, just a bag of flesh that you’ve sexualised but it’s a bag of bones that will annihilate you if you try something – merging sex and horror in this blood-thirsty, blood-rushing debut. It would’ve been easy to see this album’s singles as much of the same, with ‘You Make Me Sick’, ‘Cheerleader’ and the track title all having the same all-out, maximalist instrumentals and cutting lyrics we saw on DEMIDEVIL.
But when the project is seen as a whole, a larger narrative emerges. ‘You Make Me Sick’ becomes a song about the exploitative nature of fame, followed immediately by ‘Worms’, singing “my host body mutates.” WEEDKILLER is a story of Ashnikko defeating the venomous clutches of fame and the way it cripples your self-image, relationships and social worth.
It wouldn’t be an Ashnikko record without hefty expletives and a lot of sexual innuendo, though, but unlike the often-tired sloganism of DEMIDEVIL tracks like ‘L8r Boi’ (“He didn’t try to make her cum / On top of all that, he was a little dumb”), WEEDKILLER delivers on nuance within the fist-pumping, cathartic energy.
Ashnikko is drawing out intricate lines of love, lust, sexualisation and exploitation. This is her lover album. Penning several odes to her partner Arlo Parks, tracks like ‘Don’t Look At It’ drip with lust, while ‘Miss Nectarine’ delivers a queer coming-of-age anthem, turning a tale of unaccepting parents and hidden love into a club anthem. Elsewhere on ‘Moonlight Magic’ and ‘Want It All’ the sexual lyrics we’ve come to expect from the artist are imbued with a more matured storytelling and instrumentals so layered you’re vibing whatever she says – no matter how filthy.
But around the love letters and thirst traps, WEEDKILLER packs a punch that is ten times more deadly than DEMIDEVIL. Singing “I’m not a girl, I’m a swarm of bees / Wrapped in a skin suit, perfect teeth” on the immense, anthemic ‘Cheerleader’, the killer instinct that runs through WEEDKILLER makes it an absolute celebration of rage. And specifically, feminine rage.
Photo: Emma McIntyre
