A year ago, you could have looked at Remover’s career and traced a trajectory of increasing maturity. You could follow the throughline from the extremely online electronic chaos of their early releases—which cut across everything from goofy meme rap to the sample-heavy “Dariacore” genre Remover themselves invented—to the “grown-up” indie rock of Census Designated. “I mean, that’s literally how I branded it, I was like, ‘It’s time for me to grow up,’” Remover says, with a raised eyebrow. “Mind you, I was like 19.” Revengeseekerz, on the other hand, deliberately complicates that narrative. Even if the sound harks back to the music that made their name, it’s a step forward rather than a regression—partly thanks to the increased self-assurance Remover now feels across both the process and product of their music-making. “Compared to my first album, that whole album’s about being a kid. It’s definitely shifted in some way. This time around, it’s like a return to the old sonic ideas, but with the skills and the experiences and everything I know now.”
It feels well-timed, too. The hard-to-define sound that Remover pioneered (its roots lie in 2000s emo, then filtered through the crunch and whorl of 2010s hyperpop) feels poised to spill over into the mainstream, with the rising profiles of Remover’s peers Brakence, Glaive, and Ericdoa, as well as the rapid ascent of newcomer 2hollis. For Remover, though, it’s less about any kind of scene, and more about embracing a sound that they—for a period, at least—turned their nose up at. “I feel like for a long time, I was taking myself way too seriously,” they say. “I think I felt like I was somehow better than the sound I had come up with. But at the end of the day, who cares? I like that sound. So I was like, ‘Let me just embrace it rather than trying to keep fighting it.’ Because that wasn’t getting me anywhere.”
Indeed, Remover also has something of a reputation for disowning their previous music, being known to scrub songs from streaming services and publicly express their loathing for sounds they once explored. (It’s something they even reference on “JRJRJR,” with a lyric about rehearsing songs they hate in Silver Lake, “trying not to cry.”) So what changed? “I feel like I’m just way more confident than I used to be,” they say. “I think it just comes with getting older. I feel like I’ve been historically unsure in my decisions and this whole era of the album essentially is the first time I’ve been sure of something.” They’re always going to resent their past work at least a little, they explain, but they now have a workaround: “I figured out the solution was just to drop more shit,” they say, with a wry smile. “Just keep putting out music, and you can drown out all the things that you don’t like.”
