Much unlike his now-infamous YouTube video, Justin Mohn's latest album is nothing to lose your head over.
For decades, controversial musicians like Kanye West, Eminem and Michael Jackson have ignited debates on whether one should separate the art from the artist. Their musical genius, when juxtaposed with their once-in-a-generation talent posed an ethical quandary, one asking whether we as consumers and music fans, can or should detach their personal wrongdoings from the superb quality of their work.
After all, some would argue, the trope of the tortured artist, a creative whose artistic genius — and consequential madness — spills beyond the confines of their work, exists for a reason.
This one is called Cold War Waste Town pic.twitter.com/YON6gVzXkh
— Trad Strength Coach (@based_coach1) January 31, 2024
In the case of Justin Mohn, the self-described “militia leader” who was arrested on Tuesday after flaunting his father’s decapitated head in a 14-minute YouTube video, this age-old question suddenly becomes moot. His 2021 album Cold War Waste Town is simply too terrible to overlook his (alleged) penchant for patricide.
Much like YouTube’s terms of service, Mohn isn’t bound by the guidelines of good — or even inoffensive – music. Throughout the entirety of his fourth album, the 32-year-old jettisons the smothering confines of time signatures, coherent keys, non-pitchy vocals and production mods beyond GarageBand’s default settings.
Between the discordant, deranged vocals on “They Came For Justin Mohn” the inexplicable tempo increase towards the end of “Wonky Honky” and the exact same starter pack production settings appearing on every single one of the album’s 10 songs, you too will wish Mohn would arrive at your door with a katana. Death, on some level, would be a much more enjoyable fate than sitting through all 36 minutes of Cold War Waste Town.
It isn’t just the album’s tonal qualities that make it sound like a bad, edgelord parody of Gene Belcher’s fart-filled tunes on Bob’s Burgers. Mohn’s lyrics too, are a masterclass in mediocrity. While we, as listeners, may never know what note will spill from his lips next, there is one guarantee: lyrics that will make you — like the Alphabet content moderator stuck reviewing his viral clip — deeply re-examine how you found yourself confronted with this work.
From lamenting over a girl who wears a thong, thwarts authority and “doesn’t brush or floss” in “Strange Black Teeth,” employing mac and cheese as a bad — and objectively incorrect — metaphor about white America, and bad name-drops punctuated by rhyming dictionary word-play — “she’s moaning about baloney,” Mohn nonsensically sings in “Mohny Baloney,” — writing is clearly not Mohn’s strong suit.
But even when he's not poorly referencing his last name — or strangely predicting his 2024 downfall – Mohn manages to achieve the impossible, turning classics like Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” and Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice” baby into bad, out-of-tune monstrosities.
Whether those samples are cleared — much like the fate of his ongoing legal woes — will stay between Mohn, God and a whole lot of lawyers.
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