After the death of their third member, Groggs, the two remaining members of Injury Reserve went their separate ways after releasing their final album (which would go on to change hip-hop in some interesting ways), By The Time I Get To Phoenix (named after the Isaac Hayes song of the same name). RiTchie did his own thing and released some solo music (which was honestly fire), and Parker Corey just kinda... disappeared.

Randomly, out of the blue in 2023, a new duo of just RiTchie and Parker would start by the name of By Storm (similarly titled to the final track off of By The Time I Get To Phoenix called Bye Storm). Then more silence until 2025, where they'd final drop more singles leading up to this album. Then on January 30th of this year, they finally released a new album under this new group.

To start, this is wildly different from By The Time I Get To Phoenix. Thematically, they are pretty similar, both focusing on the concept of death. But sonically they're two entirely different worlds. By The Time I Get To Phoenix is chaotic, messy, deranged, and experimental. It also paved a subgenre of hip-hop called "post-rap", as it blends the sounds of post-rock and hip-hop.

This album here is more mellow, controlled, and honestly more depressing. It has psychedelic elements on it that add an edge of other-worldliness to it. This album will have ya floating during most of the experience.

This is easily the best work they've made, better than Floss, better than the Injury Reserve self titled album, and miles better than By The Time I Get To Phoenix. This is such a good fucking album. Even if they're still grieving over their friend's death from years ago, they didn't let it affect the quality of this album, and it didn't feel like a repeat of BTTIGTP.

Not going to go super in-depth into each song like I do with my other reviews, I'll just drop my top five tracks and leave it at that.

My top five tracks:

1. In My Town

2. Zig Zag

3. GGG

4. Best Interest (feat. billy woods)

5. Can I Have You For Myself?

Rating: 10/10, one of the best of the year (so far at least)

that's all, bye :D