★★★★☆
“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
In the same way DEMIDEVIL is the album you want to put on when a boy messes you around, WEEDKILLER is the album you’ll turn to when the whole world tries to get to you, when a stranger on the street tells you to smile, when a guy in the club grabs you, when your boss talks down to do.
With the all-out maximalist elements like the gunshots in ‘WEEDKILLER’ or the raging guitars in ‘Chokehold Cherry Python’, this album is loud and chaotic in all the right ways, without ever becoming too much. You can listen from start to finish and come out feeling energised rather than exhausted, which is a clear sign of an excellently produced record. While always leaning heavily on the hyper-pop pedals, WEEDKILLER has enough variety in its sonics that the Ashnikko brand of in-your-face rage-pop is solid but not over-sold.
And just when it could risk doing that, you reach the last track; something so different but so perfect for the horror-inspired world of this album, Ethel Cain enters. Merging Ethel’s heavenly vocals, always feeling like they’ve been plucked straight from a church, with the roughness of Ashnikko, the contrast works perfectly, bringing a whole new side of the artist to the table. Singing “I’m tired of dirt and grit / I want something soft”, the record is wrapped up with a bow, the meaning laid out.
Ashnikko is in her lover era but the world won’t let her be. Stuck in a world of limited empathy, a world so quick to turn sexuality into sexualisation, a world so ready to beat down, abuse or limit women, WEEDKILLER is a push-and-pull between the desire to soften and the desire to lash out.
