Brutalismus 3000's 'Harmony' Is Out, and the Berlin Gabber Duo Got Disciplined Without Getting Soft

The Berlin duo Brutalismus 3000 put out their second album, Harmony, on Friday through Live From Earth, the label and creative shop they have run with since the start. It is their first full-length since the 2023 debut ULTRAKUNST, and it shows up with a guest list that reads like a dare: a Lil Wayne cover, a track with Underworld, a spoken-word cameo from the actress Anya Taylor-Joy, and co-production from Boys Noize and Dylan Brady of 100 gecs. On paper that is a recipe for a mess. It mostly is not.

Brutalismus 3000 is Victoria Vassiliki Daldas on vocals and Theo Zeitner on production, and their whole thing has always been gabber bluntness pushed until it curdles into something sad. Distorted kicks, reverse bass, metal-guitar squeal, and Daldas singing like she is gargling broken glass over a love song for the end of the world. Harmony keeps all of that and tightens it. The duo sound disciplined here in a way they were not on ULTRAKUNST, and the discipline is what makes the record land instead of just hit.

What actually happens on it

"Garland" is the clearest case for the band. It stacks sawing digital feedback, revving synths, and thudding 808s into a track that keeps climbing without coming apart, which is harder to pull off than they make it sound. The cover of Lil Wayne's "A Milli" looks like a stunt and plays like one for about a minute, then the tempo jumps and it turns into a real banger. "I Bring My Gun to the Function" gets a sleek finish from Boys Noize, and Daldas roughs it back up before it can get too clean. "No Friends in the Company" and "You Were Never Really Here but I Miss Ya" run on paranoia and need, and both turn that into something you can chant back.

The Underworld team-up, "Friends at the Pigshed," is the surprise of the record. Two outsider dance acts fluent in nonsense syllables and real feeling, and the track comes out bright and wide open, almost a relief next to the claustrophobia around it. By the time Harmony hits the punk charge of "Gore Louvre" and the two-part "Testo Skin," the title has stopped reading as a joke about chaos and started to mean what it says.

Where it strains

The album's biggest swing is also its weakest. "Morning Is for the Happy" hands Anya Taylor-Joy a poem about a rough hangover to read, and the interlude lands as a name more than a moment. Brutalismus 3000 still reach for shock now and then when they do not need to. They are better when the feeling does the work, which on Harmony is most of the time.

The take

This is the best Brutalismus 3000 has sounded. They took the gabber, the screaming, and the ugly-romantic streak and arranged all of it without sanding off the parts meant to make you flinch. Slant called the result "acrid, elegiac, a little ridiculous," which is right, and it leaves out that the thing is also full of hooks. Put it on loud. That is the only way it works anyway.