Mega Bog, the audacious avant-pop collective led by Erin Elizabeth Birgy, have released their enigmatic seventh album, End of Everything. Exploring the boundaries of experimental soundscapes and traditional songwriting, Birgy grapples with bewilderment through expressive and highly stylistic singing and production, seeking something palpable to convey surrender, mourning, and resilience amidst introspective chaos. The results can require some effort from the listener, with its high-octane flourishes and intense performances, but the reward is a hard-hitting, wonderfully dark pop collection.
Moving away from guitar-driven compositions, Birgy shifts to piano and synthesizer, digitising her earthly sentiments with volatility and fluidity. The album pulsates with weighty rhythms, screeching metallic guitars, throbbing basslines, cascading layers of synths, and monumental refrains without ever losing its inherent sense of mischief and rebellion.
While ecological themes surface, notably in tracks like "Anthropocene" that laments on a literal scorching earth, End of Everything is predominantly an intensely personal odyssey through Birgy's psyche. The track "The Clown" finds the artist singing of the collapse under the weight of psychic burdens, while simultaneously heralding both an apocalyptic finale and new beginnings. Birgy questions how to encompass the vastness of existence in the track "All and Everything", pondering the ability to enjoy life in a world on fire, to wail, surrender, and share energy and knowledge.
Hidden in this dark album are moments of celebration; torches of light in the dark corridor. The track "Love Is," penned by Austin Jackson of Dragons, establishes a connection for Birgy to her time in Flagstaff, where she immerses herself in a matrilineal magical practice alongside a community of musical witches. This untamed occult influence permeates End of Everything, infusing it with transcendent qualities where the gentle and the primal entwine with tunes to boot.
★★★½