LustSickPuppy

About LustSickPuppy

LustSickPuppy is the project of Los Angeles-based artist Chris Landers, who's been carving out an aggressively singular space in the internet's weirder corners since around 2020. The music lands somewhere between industrial hip-hop, breakcore, and whatever you'd call the sound of a computer having a nervous breakdown. It's abrasive stuff, built on distorted beats that sound like they're clipping on purpose and vocals that veer from whispered threats to full-on screaming.

Landers came up through SoundCloud and Bandcamp, releasing a steady stream of tracks that caught on with people deep into the hyperpop-adjacent scene. But calling it hyperpop feels lazy. LustSickPuppy is darker and more confrontational than that, drawing from harsh noise and power electronics as much as anything with pop DNA. Early tracks like "INSUBORDINATE" and "SPLIT" established the template: blown-out production, politically charged lyrics about queer identity and systemic violence, and zero interest in making any of it easy to digest.

The breakthrough, if you can call it that for someone operating intentionally underground, came with the 2022 album "As Hard As You Can." It's 25 minutes of relentless noise-rap that somehow feels meticulously structured despite sounding like chaos. Songs like "TOURNIQUET" and "CONTROL DELETE" became touchstones for a specific subset of extremely online music fans who were bored with anything polite. The album caught attention outside the usual circles too, showing up on year-end lists from critics trying to make sense of where aggressive electronic music was headed.

Landers is also known for live shows that are more like performance art, often involving body paint, latex, and confrontational stage presence that pushes back against respectability politics in queer spaces. The aesthetic is deliberately uncomfortable, mixing fetish imagery with political messaging in ways that force audiences to sit with their own reactions. It's not shock value for its own sake—there's a clear throughline about bodily autonomy and resistance—but it's definitely not for everyone.

In 2023, LustSickPuppy signed to Garage Records, which felt both surprising and inevitable. The label's given Landers more resources without sanding down the edges. Recent singles like "MEGAFAUNA" show some evolution—slightly cleaner production, more dynamic range—but nothing that suggests a play for mainstream acceptance. Collaborations with artists like Blacksage and features on compilations alongside Scene Queen and 3OH!3 have expanded the reach a bit, though LustSickPuppy remains firmly cult status.

Right now Landers seems focused on pushing the project's visual and performative elements as much as the music itself. There's talk of a new album for 2024, supposedly even more focused on industrial influences. Whether that happens or not, LustSickPuppy has already established a clear identity: uncompromising, politically engaged noise that exists entirely on its own terms. Not everyone's going to get it, which seems precisely the point.

Shows are unpredictable. Sound quality ranges from intentionally broken to accidentally broken. The crowd tends toward people genuinely into experimental stuff and people who wandered in by accident. Energy depends entirely on LustSickPuppy's mood. Sets can feel confrontational.

Known for Rabid, Sick Puppy Blues, Lust Cycle, Puppy Love (Distorted), Feral

See LustSickPuppy Live