Ashnikko - Weedkiller Album (Initial Reaction)

Ashnikko's debut full lenght album Weedkiller was released today. Before this, they have released three EPs and about 18 non-album singles.

Before hearing the album, I've seen the music videos for the singles, which are You Make Me Sick!, Worms, Cheerleader, WEEDKILLER and Possession of a Weapon.

In interviews, they have told that the album is a concept album and the overarching theme of it is based on a short story they wrote. On the surface level, it's about a war between a fae community living in The Wasteland Planet and a group of fae-eating robots lead by the antagonist, Weedkiller. The fae protagonist kills Weedkiller by becoming partially robot themself. On a deeper level, there are themes of the rapidly increasing AI technology, nature conservation and Ash's personal experience of being raped (they're addressing their rapist). Visually, Ash has been inspired by i.e. the Tank Girl comics, the Angel's Egg anime and the Mad Max and Midsommar movies.

World Eater

Very catchy hook and thought-provoking lyrics. The beat is just as good as their beats usually are - absolute fire (Slinger and Scheller really know what they're doing)! 🔥

"Big guns, big money, big cleavers / World eater / It's a big machine, we feed her / Garden reaper / They kill for fun, for leisure"

I think World Eater is Weedkiller, but that they're also a metaphor for the society, "the machine". We feed it, with all that we do and are, because we are it. And the society as a whole is cold and doesn't care for the individual. But there are individual people who want to make the world a better and less cold place, like Ashnikko, when they say "I'm sweet like anti-freezer". (Although, anti-freezer is also candy-colored liquid, and drinking it will have a similar effect than drinking alcohol, but it's much more dangerous to drink than alcohol... I'm gonna have to give these lyrics some more thought and come back to them.)

I had to google what a 'cleaver' is and it's both a certain type of plant and a certain type of a knife (that very big rectangular one you chop meat with). The plant is one that has small hooks that it uses to creep along the ground and over other plants, and it spreads it's seeds with burrs, which are these tiny ball-shaped things with tiny hooks on them, so they can cling onto animal fur and human clothing and spread around. The seeds are inside the burr. Very clever double. I bet the album is full of nature-themed doubles...

"AI hate my flesh"

Says the fae... Interesting. What I get from that is that the robots eat the faes, not for nourishment, but because they hate the faes. In real life, AI technology is made to create artificial pictures of humans, so the AI "hate" Ash for being a normal human being with human flesh.

There's only one verse and the song is only 2,5min long... But I guess that's fitting for an opening song of the album. 

Visualizer is Weedkiller, with a red sky as a background.

You Make Me Sick!

First single release from the album.

Very clearly written about someone the protagonist hates. Aka Weedkiller/the rapist.

"Squash you like a rotten fruit" for example. Clearly about someone you hate, and another nature themed double. 

And the amazing metal scream 💙

Another song that's only about 2min...

"Now you're crying and you're shaking / Take your fuckin tears, bottle them and use them as a face mist / I'm beautiful" I love them. They're so savage.

Worms

Another single.

Amazing lyricism, I need to break down these properly. Best lyrics out of the 4-5 songs I've heard so far. 

Very much more relaxed than the other songs. Although You Make Me Sick! is a bit more in your face... maybe they're polar opposites?

Also, worms in my brain, ants under skin, etc. The nature theme continues.

Another song that's 2,5min long.

Super Soaker (feat. Daniela Lita)

The whispers in the beginning gave me shivers <3

The rest of the song kept me hooked for the entire 2,5min (again) that it lasted. The fast, beating bass and the cadence on the vocals (intense, but in a very calm and collected way) made me anxious, but locked in place. I absolutely love it. If I could change something from this album, it'd be thei delivery. Their pronunciation used to be very clear, but on this album, I have to look up the lyrics of all the songs...

From what I can gather from the lyrics, this is about a consensual sexual relationship, that... well, there's bondage... and blood... but it's still consensual... In the context of the fantasy story, it's about the robots capturing and killing the faes. The song is so intense, because sex and violence are both very intense.

Visualizer is Ash, longingly touching a humanoid creature. It's not Weedkiller, it looks more like it's made of roots.

Don't Look At It

The beat <3 oh gosh it's good!

The song's very much trap.

The thing they don't want a girl looking is their ass... But in the end they're, like, "ok, go look at it", lmao. 

It seems to be about a girl Ash is attracted to, but who is about to leave them, and so Ash doesn't want to start anything with her because that'd just break their heart when she leaves. 

What's it got to do with the album as a whole, idk... Not my fav from the album, but it'll grow on me.

Visualizer is Ash in an armor, and flashing lights.

Cheerleader

This time Ash means it - since I happen to know this song is about the male gaze.

I love this song <3

"Tell me how my ass tastes, little bottom-feeder" 🤣 BARS!

Moonlight Magic

I CAN HEAR THE LYRICS <3

Very pop, catchy and danceable. Very nice.

It's a love song to a girl. Probably Arlo, Ash's girlfriend.

There's references to witchcraft, like the title, "I'm only human / you are something magic", "do your wicked things to me", "our skin connects and makes a shrine"...

I love this song. It's a great pop song, I love the lyrics and the imagery. 10/10, even without any rap in it.

Visualizer is Ash, lodged in a tree trunk, staring at the moon.

Miss Nectarine

Oh wow, the storytelling... Two girls, or Ash and a girl, who don't feel safe being gay in their homes because of parents... But the main character is the only one who would be willing to take the leap and run away together, the love interest prefers to stay behind and pretend to be straight.

Amazing. I can't even decide on a quote, because all of it is needed to paint the full picture. 

(Might contain a movie reference to Jawbreaker, but I'd have to refresh my memory on the plot to be sure and to draw a comparison to the story presented here.)

It's another pop song. And I'm beginning to wonder if there's a pattern. See, I have a vague memory about the song Weedkiller, where apparently the AI robots "charmed" the protagonist with images of a land where everything is fine... and then we get a bunch of gay love songs... Worms was them going to a war... Super Soaker was violence / very rough sex, which lead us to the array of love songs (and Cheerleader, a song about the male gaze and society's expectations on women)... I think the fae protagonist was attacked at Super Soaker and is now under a spell. They were tricked, with sex as the weapon. And now they're hallucinating. They even fooled me - I was out here wondering, how does all of this relate to the main story...

Or, since Possession of a Weapon hasn't showed up yet, either... Maybe Ash is fooling the Weedkiller with sex?

Visualizer is Ash alone in the distance, immobilized, surrounded by boulders. You can barely see Ash's in there, and that's the point. "I got nobody but me", they're saying, because Miss Nectarine wouldn't step out of the closet. It's like Ash doesn't exist to Miss Nectarine.

Chokehold Cherry Python

More metal vibes, like You Make Me Sick! Intense. Wow.

The lyrics are a warning, "I'm coming for you".

Visualizer is very cool. There's Ash, I think I also see other people's/faes' arms, and there's something yellow on Ash's neck, I think it's the python. Although, I think there's double here I'm not getting right away...

Weedkiller

Then, the climax of the story.

"There's nowhere to run in the simulation / I'm having fun, it's a celebration."

"I've been iced in hibernation."

Yeah. Ash / the fae was fooled with sex and love. But it was all a simulation, it wasn't real. It just seemed real.

And earlier Ash had the bar about being sweet like anti-freeze. So, real love can melt you from the hallusination you're frozen in. Like taking the pill in Matrix. Do you take the blue one that lets you continue the hallusination, that makes you happy but is artificial? Or do you take the red one, that breaks the spell, where the world isn't perfect, but is real? 

"I made knives out of broken ribs"

Wow. Broken ribs of the other faes, yes... but also broken ribs of every violence victim, i.e. domestic violence and violent rape. Ribs broken when the pressure to be thin goes so far you get surgery to have some of your ribs removed. Ash is taking what society has done to women and hurting the society back with what it's done to them.

Want It All

Very catchy and mainstream hiphop sound.

The lyrics are a mix of sexual innuendos and continuation on the story. Ash wants all the sex with this girl, but also all the power they feel they're getting from being part robot.

The lyrics on Genius are missing a few words, but I'm pretty sure there's a Neon Genesis Evangelion reference...

Visualizer is Ash, with their back turned to us, naked, and there's two deep, vertical cuts on her back, like they had wings and someone cut them off...

Possession of a Weapon

I think this is a song about taking the power back. Ash using their feminine energy to counteract the hallucinations they experienced earlier... They were controlled with sex and love, but now they are in control. Sacral chakra is in control of one's creative expression, sexual intimacy and intuition (source: Healthline). The exact three things Ash is refering to in the song. "Don't rain on my papier-mâché" (which I broke down a bit deeper on my Initial Reaction post), "how dare I have private desires" and "I can be grotesque, move my body like chess". The last is also being aware of the power you have, if you have a vagina and/or a feminine body.

"My sacral chakra, heaven's threatened" is sort of a double. The church sees new age religious practises and witchcraft (such as chakras) as a threat. And they, or some of them, also think that Eve and the rest of women are what lead men to sin, to have sex (or even commit sexual crimes like rape). Premarital sex or lesbian sex lead to your position in heaven being threatened. But "it's just flesh, it's just flesh". One way to look at the human body is that all of the parts of it are just flesh, vagina is not any more special than an elbow or a toe. 

"Say you want my body, let me give it to you / is that what you want, blood and guts?"

These lines make me so sad for some reason... I can't explain it yet, but if I figure it out someday, I'm gonna do an entire Lyrical Breakdown on the song.

"Tumbleweed, bloody knees / I would crawl through broken glass to get home"

This one as well. Paints a very dark picture of a person who is deeply hurt and tries to find their way back to a safe place.

Tumbleweed is those ball shaped plants that roll on the desert in movies. They're full of thorns. The person is alone, abandoned somewhere (a desert with tumbleweed, an alleyway with broken glass...) and is trying to get home. Literally or figuragively.

My mind is also trying to connect tumbleweed to Weedkiller, but idk... do they have anything else in common than the name?

Dying Star (feat. Ethel Cain)

Over 4min long, where the others were 2-3min.

A ballad. Beautiful.

The lyrics are very melancholic. Beautiful, but sad...

It's hard to pick them apart again, but I feel like the protagonist wants to die. They're tired of fighting, tired of life being so goddamn hard and ready to let go. They reminisce about a past lover, although it's not clear if she is a human woman, a fae, Weedkiller, Mother Nature or someone else. Could be anyone or anything, really, and that's the beauty of poetry. The love felt good and was addictive, but also made them hurt more and more as time went on (the lyrics talk about falling - like falling deeper and deeper in love, but also falling deeper and deeper with your mood, with increasing speed and then hitting rock bottom). 

"Invasive weeds rooted in my heart"

And if Weedkiller would have killed you, you wouldn't have those weeds... On one hand they don't seem to mind the invasion, but on the other hand... I think they wish they'd be dead instead of in love...

"The forest reaches out to guide me / Blue fire paths of will-o'-wisps / Illuminate the darkness's old tricks / I'm nobody's captive (Mm) / I asked him not to kill me politely / He drained my magic core, bottled up at the source / I washed up on a sea glass shores / I'm nobody's captive (Mm)"

Wow... I'm speechless.

The visualizer is... ethereal. Just as beautiful and sad as the video. 💙

_____

I have no closing statements, as of now. This album is amazing. 10/10. 💙