IT TOOK A FEW TRIES before the Body succeeded in making the grossest pop album of all time.
Let’s jump back a bit. When Chip King and Lee Buford entered Rhode Island’s Machines with Magnets studio to record their 2013 breakthrough, Christs, Redeemers, they had no songs written.
“We had ideas for stuff, but we couldn’t really practice it because we just don’t have [the necessary equipment] to lay stuff down and figure it out,” King says over the phone. “So we just had ideas, and when we got to the studio, we started building the songs.”
That’s an unconventional way of doing things, but then again, the duo makes the conventional seem downright old-fashioned. Buford plays drums and programs beats, while King plays guitar and adds his unholy howl to the mix. Together, they combine synthesized sounds, scorched sludge-metal, beautiful vocal melodies, and clangorous noise to make something that sounds unlike anything else.
Over the past few years, Buford and King have recorded and released more collaborative records with other bands than official the Body albums. Collaborators include black metal band Krieg, grindcore powerhouse Full of Hell, Louisiana sludge titans Thou, and Sandworm, a blackened punk band from Providence, the Body’s former hometown.