Here is a fact as ironic as it is incapacitating: pain’s wagable with words, but communicating pain is painful in itself. At the site of this impasse lives Brute. Two-arming the noise and outrage surrounding the viral upswing of police brutality as source material, Brute sublimes cultural agony into sound. In crystallizing the horror felt by activists, victims, and bystanders alike - even sampling the LRAD sound cannon, a ‘sonic weapon’ used by Ferguson law enforcement to control rioters by high-decibel sirens - Al Qadiri creates a genuinely remarkable protest album that honors the pain of trauma through the only rational way to do it: simulation.