I read, write, listen to music, build scale models, and spend time with family.

Stress Sandwich is an album from the band Snailmate. OK, I confess I held back on doing anything with this album because I didn’t know what was happening. So, I listened to it a couple more times. And I still don’t know what is going on here.

Fusing rap, hard rock, screamo and a few other vibes, Snailmate doesn’t sound like any other band that I have listened to. They carve their path in the music world and leave behind tracks we can enjoy hearing repeatedly. From here and down, it is mainly pasted from their press release.

Phoenix-based Snailmate crowned 2023 by releasing their album Stress Sandwich’ and relentlessly touring. Released via Toronto’s Indiestructable Records, they offer a twisted humorous take on existential anxiety, delivering funky, poppy, screamy fun through alternative raps.

Snailmate is lyricist-vocalist and synth wizard Kalen Lander and drummer-backup vocalist Bentley Monet, whose music fuses that of Snailmate for an unpredictable and explosive sound. Together they craft music that is cathartic and relatable yet unique and genre-defying, using humour and wit to tackle topics from isolation and queer identity to bangers about hot sauce and nostalgia.

Produced by Ari Leopold at Lava Lake Studio in Phoenix, Stress Sandwich is about growth, exploring themes such as vulnerability, disappointment, and art-making as a beautiful yet imperfect process. They go head to head with depression, anxiety, imposter syndrome, anger, hunger, laziness… but also fun things! These ten tracks – laced with sarcasm, breathless lyricism and unpredictable genre-bending energy – will leave you satisfied and wanting more.

“This album has been in the works for so long. It took years to process all these feelings and experiences and distill them into just ten short songs, but I’m happy we didn’t try and finish this thing any sooner. It would have tasted so much different. The flavors needed time to develop. I couldn’t have written ‘Toll Road’ until that bastard stole our money. ‘The Snailmate Show’ wasn’t a thing before we were forced to quarantine and couldn’t play live. And until we had to go through some intense physical changes, ‘My Weird Gross Body’ just wouldn’t have been the same,” says Kalen Lander.

“I beat myself up a lot during this whole process. I felt like I was taking too long to write the lyrics, and that meant that I was bad at writing. I had lost my touch. But then I really started to understand how, when I FINALLY finished the words for a song, it was perfect. It couldn’t have been perfect if I’d forced it out any sooner. And I think ‘The Laziest Man in the World’ encapsulates that sentiment better than anything.” 

Stress Sandwich is out now, available digitally from fine music platforms, including Apple Music, Spotify, and Bandcamp, and from the band’s store, where ample merchandise is also available, including their award-winning hot sauce!

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