Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals, Live From The Apocalypse
The Maryland duo on critical acclaim versus financial gain and creating their blistering, beautiful third album, “A City Drowned In God's Black Tears.”
After the five years producer Infinity Knives and rapper Brian Ennals have had, you’d think they’d be on top of the world. The Baltimore duo spent the early part of the decade crafting two critically acclaimed albums—2020’s Rhino XXL and 2022’s King Cobra—in which disco grooves and electropunk freakouts clashed with blunt rhymes shorn of entendre or wordplay. They’ve since earned big co-signs from indie-rap heavyweights like Blockhead and Shrapknel, toured Europe twice, and opened for the Irish rap trio Kneecap last year. But now, on the verge of releasing their grimly beautiful third album, A City Drowned In God’s Black Tears, out April 4, their excitement is grinding up against frustration.
I link with Ennals and Knives—the latter was born Tariq Ravelomanana and spent his childhood in Madagascar and South Africa—at a bar in Manhattan’s Penn Station on an oddly balmy February afternoon. They’re fresh off the Amtrak from Baltimore and have another meeting ahead of them. All three of us are dressed too warmly and caught off guard by the springtime sun gleaming off the sides of Madison Square Garden as we make our way to a nearby diner to talk. As we sit down, I tell them how exciting it is to see them at what appears to be the brink of a breakthrough. “That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” Knives says with a sigh, chuckling and pausing a beat. “But I came here with $58 in my pocket today.”
Blistering honesty like that is at the core of the Knives and Ennals experience. They’re known for Ennals’ shockingly direct lyrics, which read more like unfiltered thoughts on everything from racism and overcoming mental illness to rape culture and politics. It also helps that Ennals is one of just a handful of modern rappers willing to take a public stand against Israel’s war on Gaza and Palestinians without a shred of cowardice. “Zionists are the new Nazis/Netanyahu is the new Hitler/Bodies keep piling the fuck up/America and Israel just get richer,” he screams over Knives’ frenetic synths and 808s, just 24 seconds into the album’s opening track, “The Iron Wall.” And if you think that’s bold, the closest thing to a hook here is Ennals unblinkingly reading the nation’s last three presidents for filth: “Donald Trump/You a rapist and you know it/Joe Biden/You a Nazi and you know it/Obama/You’s a devil and you know it.”
