Dedicated to his iconic grandmother Muthoni wa Kirima, the only woman to earn the rank of Field Marshal during Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising against British colonists, Lord Spikeheart‘s long-awaited solo debut The Adept is an album that seethes with revolutionary energy. He’s a unique vocalist and enigmatic storyteller who’s found his niche in the space between genres, freely mangling elements of death metal and grindcore with rap, mystical folkloric incantations and ear-splitting techno in his unrelenting search for peak sonic intensity. Screaming, growling and rhyming in Kikuyu, Kiswahili and English, he cuts an idiosyncratic shape into the cultural landscape, shining a spotlight on the African continent’s hardest, heaviest music.

Co-curated with Berlin Atonal at Unsound 2024.