Spike Hellis’ incisive 2022 track Slices is summoned anew through Chicago’s electronic rock agitators, The Children’s Crusade. Helmed by studio visionary Jason Schmal, the group on stage expands into a combustible unit featuring Cassie Tarakajian’s electrified guitar work, Oscar Peck-Dorr’s menacing synth textures, and Danny Schwartz’s driving bass lines. Yet, on record, the relentless spirit is entirely Schmal’s, a force channeling the serrated energy reminiscent of Ministry’s most caustic moments, Skinny Puppy’s industrial provocations, and the layered intensity found within Nine Inch Nails and the avant-garde edges of Björk and the Melvins.
Their interpretation of Slices, originally a frenetic dance-floor invocation by Spike Hellis, digs deeper, bearing an industrial weight that conjures the harsh realities of panic and relentless pressure. Schmal’s guttural vocals and stark spoken-word opening carve out a raw nerve, exposing societal hypocrisies and empty virtue-signaling as meaningless pantomime. The Children’s Crusade delivers a dark, Wax Trax!-infused rendition, in the spirit of the original, processing Spike Hellis’s energized original into a serrated assault, loaded with confrontational power and eerie atmospherics.
The lyrics, blisteringly critical of greed and exploitation, highlight capitalism’s cold grip, mocking empty gestures of morality against vivid scenes of calculated cruelty. As the band dismantles Spike Hellis’s rhythmic urgency and reconstructs it into a darker form, the song emerges as a caustic commentary on complicity and systemic violence, all delivered through aggressive beats and unsettling synth pulses.
“We are big fans of Spike Hellis,” says the band. “Slices…blew my mind with it being simple yet incredibly powerful. I wanted to take it and truly make a version of it that is wholly our own and I think that is what happened with this cover.”
This visceral interpretation of Slices serves as the final incendiary preview before the release of The Children’s Crusade’s debut full-length, aptly titled Black, Bruised, and Broken Down, promising further confrontations with society’s darkest instincts.
Watch the video for “Slices” below. Content, Warning: this one is brutal and not for the squeamish.
Listen to the song via Spotify below:
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