Burr Oak, Pythius & REEBZ - Black Tears

This genuinely startled me the first time the bass hit, which does not happen much anymore. Black Tears is three producers who mostly live at the heavier, darker end of drum and bass pooling their worst instincts into one track, and the result is enormous. Pythius has spent years building some of the most physically unpleasant basslines in the genre, the kind that sound less like notes than like structural damage, and here he’s got two accomplices egging him on. The intro fakes you out with something almost pretty, a hollow vocal and a slow pad, before the floor gives way into a drop that lurches rather than rolls, dragging a half-step behind where your body expects it. That lurch is the signature. It makes the track feel heavier than its actual tempo, like running in a dream. Around the two-minute mark they strip it back to a lone sub pulse and let the dread rebuild, then the second drop comes in meaner and more mechanical than the first. There’s a metallic shriek layered into it that I could honestly do without, the one bit that tips from scary into slightly silly. Everything else is immaculate. There’s a vocal sample buried in the second half, something like a choir heard through a wall, and it lays a layer of real grief over all the brutality. Dark DnB can collapse into po-faced seriousness, and this stays genuinely thrilling instead, the sound of three people enjoying being horrible together.

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