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Nov 07, 2024 By Caleb Campbell

Venus Twins are a rising Brooklyn-based outfit making a wild and experimental fusion of drum and bass, punk, and noise rock, all led by twin brothers Jake and Matt Derting. The band formed in Denton, Texas before the pair later relocated to Brooklyn in 2020 with the release of their first LP, Eat Your Dogs. Since then, the duo have been touring steadily and in 2022 they released their sophomore record, RAXIS.

This year, the band have been teasing their upcoming EP, /\/\/\/\/, with a pair of new singles, “I Just Can’t Get Enough” and “Stiching.” As the band explains, “/\/\/\/\/ is basically a concept record about sewing. /\/\/\/\/ is a written version of a zig-zag stitch, and pronounced ‘Stitching.’ Stitching themes include: omens and the forms they take, obsessively working until it negatively impacts your life, relationships falling apart, and learning from our mistakes/letting go.”

The full Stiching EP is out tomorrow, but you can stream the record early below, premiering with Under the Radar.

The EP is equal parts electrifying and overwhelming. The record’s opening prelude begins on an ambient drum-laden intro before launching into a blistering, ranting screed. Screamed vocals, distorted bass, and pummeling drums all overlap in a towering scrawl as the track rapidly flips between unfiltered noise and subdued ambient interludes. The following track, “I Just Can’t Get Enough” operates from a more traditional songwriting vein, but is equally bracing and jagged. The rhythms come in machine-gun-like blast beats and blown-out, digitized bass as the pair deliver their vocals in throat-shredding chants. The entire EP feels like constant whiplash, veering wildly between tempos and dynamics but retaining an unhinged, aggressive edge, such as with the industrial roar of the title track. Similarly, “God Help Me Bury This Fucking Light” moves in fits and starts as the band retreats into complete silence or shadowy ambient rhythms, only to come roaring back in a punishing car crash of noise. This all comes together in the tense simmering textures and all-out aural assault of the finale, “It Can’t End Like This.”

Jake says of the record, “Funny enough, the initial idea or spark to form this EP was inspired from a Nat King Cole song, ‘A Handful of Stars.’ There’s a lyric that reads ‘Venus seemed to melt right into Mars’ and we were sort of moved by it, in a way. In this song, the feelings of love seem more painful or nostalgic. Overtime, we connected with this in different ways while writing the EP. Our EP sounds nothing like this song, but makes us feel the same sort of sentimentality/heartbreak…

The process of writing/recording this EP took two years, since we (and our producer) were always on tour we’d nail down a day or two in the studio, get a few things done, and then leave for another month. This process kept repeating, increasing stress, and eventually led to us getting a lot more unique sounds with bass and drums. It’s great this project took so long to finish; with all this time, we were evolving as songwriters and kept pushing the level of ‘digital’ into these tracks.

I broke all my cymbals on tour and kept the pieces, throughout the entire EP is crushing metal/glass sounds. This feels like what was actually going through my head when we were writing this. I wanted the songs to sound like they were tearing apart or breaking to pieces.

We want to highlight the 3rd track on the EP, it’s us using our twin telepathy. Twin telepathy is real if you didn’t know… Super happy with how this track flows in between tracks 2 and 4, as half interlude/half song. We’ve written a bunch of interludes for our live set over the years and this is one we meticulously grinded together into a song.

For this EP, we wrote by instinct and intuition, running with every spur of the moment idea we had, especially in post.”

Check out the full EP below, out everywhere tomorrow via Three One G.