It’s been four years since Minneapolis noise rap group Moodie Black released their last album, Nausea, on Fake Four. Normally, when it takes that long between albums, you might expect a little bit of change or growth. Every once in a while, that journey in between albums becomes more intense and personal, which is what happened when Moodie Black frontperson Kdeath publicly came out as a trans woman. Identity is a deeply nuanced and personal narrative, and that’s exactly the journey we go on with Lucas Acid.

There’s quite a few layers to this album that are informed by the long journey that it took to get to Lucas Acid. What will sound familiar to listeners from the jump is what has stayed the same, which is the pounding, confrontational sound filled with distortion and feedback that longtime listeners have grown accustomed to. Normally, in the past, they would have mixed the vocals into the middle, to make everything blend together into one sonic template, and leave it up to the listener to pick apart the elements if they desired. Coming into this album, given the subject matter and the journey that Kdeath had been on, the decision was made to push the vocals to the forefront in the mix. Now, in the past, Moodie Black was already dealing with subject matter like isolation and disillusionment with society, but there was this use of irony and absurdism that kept listeners at an arm’s length. Kdeath already had a certain amount of identity politics to deal with before, as a tall person of mixed African American and Mexican American heritage working in experimental noise rap, and it’s not like Kdeath’s coming out narrative was an easy one to understand. That is to say, you don’t suddenly have an emcee with long hair and a higher voice, typically feminine. No, identity can be messy and hard to define, and that’s where Kdeath finds herself after this journey of self-discovery. How this translates to the music is you still have this noisy, aggressive, and confrontational music, but now the lyrics have the anger that’s compounded by a vulnerable honesty, as Kdeath becomes more comfortable with who they are. The rest of society might still be bullshit, and there are plenty of reasons to be disillusioned, but there’s also a lot to be learned and small moments of tenderness snuck in as Kdeath learns to be honest with who she is.

Lucas Acid won’t be for everyone, but not because of the subject matter. It won’t be for everyone because this is an aggressive sonic assault on your ears, without many moments of letting up, coming at you with aggressive beats and heavy guitars. If that is your speed, though, you’ll also get a really important album about self-discovery and not fitting into a box.