A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears exhibits what community actually looks like versus singular top-down vision and adherence, with a sprawling take-no-prisoner approach to truth, reality, and uplift.
Release date: April 4, 2025 | Phantom Limb | Infinity Knives Instagram | Brian Ennals Instagram | Bandcamp
There’s a particular scene in Coogler’s Sinners that struck me as comparable to A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears. It shouldn’t have worked, on paper it could sound intriguing, but any misstep in attempt could come off contrived, hamfisted, or worse yet, just fucking corny. But Coogler and the cast and crew pull it the fuck off, and Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals develop that same leftfield chemistry that fires on all cylinders to develop a hip hop gem, and one of the most important albums of this year. I haven’t found myself as intrigued by an album as much as this one in quite some time. I’ve debated with my EIN brethren, tirelessly raging about how fucking wonderful this thing is, and while we’re all in agreement of its breathtaking delivery, it seemed to have struck a particular nerve with me; leaving me randomly spouting out Brian Ennals whenever I feel that spirit conjured.
Overall, this album is all over the place. We get hip hop in various tones, carrying similarities, but not replications of: The Coup, Good Kid m.a.a.d city-era Kendrick, backpacker, with some phonk to boot. Also in the mix, you have two incredibly gorgeous folk tracks that have no business being aligned with the meat cleaver haymaker thud punches of Brian Ennals‘ delivery, but for some magical reason coalesce beautifully. Somewhere in there you get some ’60s-era Italian film score, salsa, and a doom transition that just… fucking works.
This chaos could be enough to scare off plenty, and draw detractors that subscribe to formula compliance as perfection, especially considering the brutal and raw realness Ennals doesn’t avoid through speaking truth to power of the human condition, but every time I relisten to this album, I can’t seem to feel any other way about it: this is praxis.
Thus, we get back to the analogy of Sinners, and the idea of genuine liberation in the juke joint, and its evolution into the modern house party, and the further development of the digital version in the modern day: the group chat.
A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears works best as an example of what it looks like drawing in people with independent individualism, and instead of developing a specific uniform, lexicon, rules, and acceptable behavior, they embrace, support, and uplift one another; letting everyone shine in their own particular light.
Ennals, for his part, is the one guy at the party that is just fucking crushed by the reality and ails of the world. Infinity Knives, and the various featured musicians generally take a jam band improvised approach to developing beautiful tunes, and succeed in various ways. Ennals breaks through all that rich realtime developed composition like taking a sledgehammer to a piñata with an uneasy self awareness, ‘everybody’s on eggshells when I’m in the spot, man this shit gets tense,‘ but never holds back, ever.
The best examples of this are on both “Live at the Chinese Buffet” and “Sometimes, Papi Chulo.” On the former, Ennals wastes no time setting the stage, and gives no warning, since the only mode he knows is just raw fucking reality. Not even a second in, Ennals raps: ‘the bitch that got Emmit Till killed died and I pray that it was painful as fuck/The government hates you, god’s probably not real, so I told V and Knives all we got is us/RIP TINA, fuck Ike, fuck breathing, fuck life,‘ and on the latter he goes down a long list of things that he feels never straying away from the harder, less savory feelings, but doing the exact opposite and amplifying them, and sometimes it’s best to just listen to the source rather than quote it directly.
Around all of this, the musicians continue to play, essentially giving him the mic, encouraging him more. It’s a beautiful example of bringing people in, regardless of what the fuck ever, and coming together. In a country where rugged individualism has gone toxic, and the continual tearing of the fabric of community is fraying into authoritarian shreds, it’s potent even if it’s not palatable, because reality doesn’t fucking change regardless what ever you want to believe.
“Everyone I love is Depressed” finds the entire collective coming together and developing an east coast response to the call of The Coup’s “The Guillotine” with specs of crushing lyrics of self harm clearing the way for the dance mandate of a chorus that equates to a group hug. Overall, people generally ignore, or hamper the louder voices. When one person says things that are beholden to honesty, but generate emotional discomfort, people tend to tell that one person to shut the fuck up, or generally ignore them. Infinity Knives does the exact opposite. It’s equal parts bold, honorable, and empathetic. But overall it’s just motherfucking communal. To a people that forgot the idea of what that is because tech bros have taken a digital knife to divide, and conquer in their quest to shore up as much resources they can to starve the majority, that idea is fucking priceless.
“Soft Pack Shorty” plays out like a street weary love song with some interesting nods to Kendrick Lamar’s m.a.a.d city via both beat, flow, and adlib yet completely avoid imitation, with it more so playing out as homage (there’s another interesting line Ennals drops that further conspires to draw conclusion about a rap god not able to make hits).
The tracks devoid of Ennals don’t lack in substance, instead fully standing on their own. “A City drowning in God’s Black Tears” and “Two Headed Buffalo” split the folk inspiration difference between the classic pre-electric protest music of the ’60s, and the weirdo freak folk energy of the late ’90s early ’00s era. Sometimes it feels like good pacing, sometimes it allows you to take a breather, and sometimes the mix just works. Infinity Knives and Ennals both exemplify what can be done together, when making room for everyone and everything, like building a humanist kaleidoscope that draws focus to beauty, in lieu of division through outdated words like genre.
Lessons like this are exactly what we need on this side of the Atlantic. The human experience has been hijacked with bullshit mind control nonsense derived from fear that lacks authenticity in its aim. We’ve become lost through digital division, allowing the wrong people too much influence and power that continue to make our lives harder to simply just live. While those who take away from us continue to siphon that quality of life from us, damaging irreplaceable resources, all for ego-driven false sense of dominance, and ignoring the truth, and reality, others are spinning real gold. Sometimes, you just gotta be honest, and make a stellar album. Sometimes, the rest of the world should fucking stop, and take notice. And sometimes, life don’t give a chance to make amends, but also, sometimes, and specifically in this instance, Infinity Knives and Brian Ennals did just that, at least for me. A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears is an end-to-end masterpiece.
