Album Review : Remote Viewing - State Violence (2026)
As much as I enjoy their music, I cannot find a valid reason why you should listen to Remote Viewing. They are not popular or influential. Catchiness is the last thing on these five feral British middle-aged dads minds. In fact, Remote Viewing is rather conventionally unpleasant to listen to. But it does feel the same way punching someone in their fucking faces does for the first three seconds, before you live to see the consequences. Imagine that feeling, but lasting an entire record.
There's an exquisite catharsis for the morally wounded to Remote Viewing's ugly music and that catharsis is alive and kicking on their new record State Violence. If you know, you know. If you know, it will make sense to you before it even starts.
State Violence features seven songs and exactly forty minutes of new music. The compositions are more muted and circular, but vocalist Ed Dudley's seething, ghoulish rare is more shambolic and disorganized than ever, giving this fourth full-length record a more urgent and desperate feel than its predecessor Modern Addictions. It’s the sound of a mind collapsing on itself like a dying star as the cruel and uncaring hellscape around you moves forward, which is quite the 2026 feeling to hit.
The difference between State Violence and Modern Addictions is most apparent on a song like Retrain As A Swan, where the contradiction between the steady, swirling (and sometimes kind of melodic?) guitar riffs and Ed Dudley’s psychosis create an unresolvable tension. The song never explodes into a satisfying climax. Retrain As A Swan keeps building and building poisonous levels of dread like water seeping up your basement. Inescapable, damaging and increasingly dangerous.
My favorite song on the record Straight to VHS comes right next. Tom Fowler and James Bryant's guitar work feels much more dramatic. Supported by a rhythm section with the ferocity of an air strike, they lean hard into their instrument and let every riffs linger and breathe for Dudley to exploit. Remote Viewing has always been a band that celebrates playing hard over playing precise and the two Johns playing bass and drum respectively are the staple of the band's sound.
Disrespecting the Arts is another monolith with what are perhaps the most killer riffs on State Violence. It is the most guitar-driven song on the record, swapping the heartbroken tension for bombastic release. Remote Viewing have shoegaze influences in most of their songs, but this is as straight up EyeHateGod-inspired sludge. There are hard rock elements and a sass to Disrespecting the Arts that channels a different kind of power. It’s not self-loathing like their other material, it's flat out hostile.
State Violence is a record with two identities, revealing the latter with the nine minutes melancholic mammoth Accidental Holiday that shifts the vibe from pre-apocalyptic hopelessness to post-apocalyptic hopelessness. The quiet, melodic guitar melodies lost in muted feedback conjures a different lighting on Ed Dudley's seething rage. Accidental Holiday is haunted by a wounded melody that is really the real protagonist of the song. Dudley is just a mouthpiece for a nasty feeling that wells inside you.
The mysterious closer Bird of a Feather is on in 7 minutes reminded me of Swans' Soundtrack for the Blind. A thin drone and a quiet guitar melody hang in the air for almost three minutes like the fallout of an explosion. it would be as home on a midwest emo record as it is on as a closure point to Remote Viewing’s confrontational sludge. These two songs reveal the dramatic arc of the record, which is its most interesting aspect. It’s an escalation of violence that winds down and fades into nothingness.
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No one at the gym will ever think you’re cool for blasting Remote Viewing in the PA system, but I suspect that you’d do it only because you're already on hostile terms with everyone. It's that type of music. It nurses a fucked up wound that will intuitively starts hurting to the sound of Ed Dudley's manic episodes. State Violence is quite different from Modern Addictions. It’s more purposeful, it’s less of a collection of songs, but it’s less cathartic. I do believe it's the point, though.
Remote Viewing wants you to sit in your discomfort.
7.6/10
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