Boston's Haasan Barclay and Shaka Dendy, who perform together as Camp Blood, have routinely shaken up the hardcore rap scene with their genre-bending beats and brash lyrics. They stay the course with their new single, "Cenobite," which offers a gripping glimpse into the minds of the industrial hip-hop duo.
The track opens with an unnerving synth, then explodes into a thunderous beat and commanding verse, with references to race, death, and "lost innocence." It's incredibly raw and as jarring as it is intriguing.
Barclay tells me they put the song together at a time when he felt a sense of stagnation and looming peril. For him, the track evokes a sort of sinister chaos. "The textures of the synth and guitars on the track left me with a really specific unsettling feeling," he says. It's a dissonance that also inspired the song's name, which Barclay says is a nod to the Hellraiser movie series's demonic extra-dimensional beings.
For Dendy, "Cenobite" expresses a frustration with the conversations he was having with peers about Capitalism as it relates to Black liberation.
"I was having conversations with peers about Black people's relationship to Capitalism, and the purported irony of a "Black Capitalist"—if we understand Black people to be the foundation of Capitalism in a modernist sense, how can we be expected not to participate, even when the game is so evidently rigged against us?" Dendy says. "Whether you're the player or the ball, there's something to be lost; innocence, in a sense."
An unreleased version of "Cenobite" was originally featured on the skateboarding magazine Thrasher website as part of their video series with skating collective and company Fancy Lad. Now, they're giving it an official release, with more new music to come later this year. As for touring, they're ready to return it to it post-pandemic.
"Live shows are such a crucial aspect of what we do," Barclay says. "There's a real explosive camaraderie that happens at our shows. Can't wait to get back to it!"
