Street Sects - Gentrification III: Death and Displacement

In January of 2014 Street Sects released their first single, Gentrification I: The Morning After the Night We Raped Death. The two song 7-inch was the first of a planned five part series titled Gentrification: A Serial Album. In June of the same year they released Gentrification II: Broken Windows, Sunken Ceilings. After the second single was released, the band was approached by San Francisco-based record label The Flenser, and the band switched gears to begin working on a full length for the label. One release led to another, and the final three installments of the Gentrification series were put on hold, indefinitely. Now, five years later, in the wake of the release of their more melodic and melancholic sophomore LP, The Kicking Mule, the band have returned to the serial album that started it all to pick up where they left off. Gentrification III: Death and Displacement isn't so much a return to form (the bands' style has always been in flux, and their approach to songwriting and production has evolved significantly in the past half-decade) as it is a return to the emotional intent that fueled those first two releases. The themes and stories addressed within the Gentrification series were never intended to be strict socioeconomic commentary, but rather the conversation and consequences surrounding Gentrification were meant to be a fractured and brutal lens through which we are given a voyeuristic look into the emotional perspectives of characters whose lives are maligned by alienation, exile, and economic peril. If crime is primarily a symptom of the underclass, then perhaps our prisons are filled with some our most valuable living lessons. These castaways, offenders and recidivists are a glaring example of the consequences of a systematic ideological violence inflicted by the haves upon the have-nots. The Gentrification series is not an indictment or an apology, it is an empathetic gritting of the teeth, clenching of the fist, and pulling of the trigger.