Show Me The Body. Photo by Rob Coons
On a freezing night in December 2017, I saw Show Me The Body for the first time. Freezing art students and punks lined up outside of Market Hotel, an all-ages venue in Brooklyn; on the inside, it felt like a squat where someone had pushed the couches to the side to create a stage in the middle of the living room. We were just over a year into the Trump presidency, when shock and fear had given way to anger; Show Me The Body, with their fearsome brand of “ecclesiastical punk,” was constructing a way forward, with poorly ventilated spaces like this one serving as the threshold.
Unlike many cultural forces from that era of shock and confusion, Show Me The Body have thrived. Because at the center of Show Me The Body lies a dedication to community and self-empowerment: Vocalist and banjo player Julian Cashwan Pratt, bassist Harlan Steed, and drummer Jackie Jackieboy (who joined the band in 2021 for the EP Survive) are also founders of Corpus NYC, the band’s all-encompassing collective built on the tenants of mutual aid, creativity, and self-defense.
“We move with militancy and love,” the band told The FADER in 2022. "Our goal is to spread love, but in order to do anything well you must take it seriously and work very hard. Plus, we are not hippies, if you know what I mean.” The three coffins that have become the band’s symbol, the ones dedicated fans have tattooed on their bodies, aren’t just an aesthetic: at their best, you get the sense that Show Me The Body really would die for this shit.
The trio taps that intensity to a new degree on Corpus II EP I, a collection of six songs released without warning last Friday. It is the second time the band has named a project for their collective after 2017’s Corpus, which packed together underground stalwarts like Moor Mother, Eartheater, and Dreamcrusher, never hesitating to enter their specific worlds when it felt natural to do so. The album was dotted with manifestos like its incendiary fascist-smashing hardcore closer “Proud Boys,” but its priority was rubbing shoulders and sharing sweat rather than leftist theory.
The brevity of Corpus II works to its advantage, better highlighting the individual strength of each contributing artist. Zulu — the Black hardcore band behind A New Tomorrow, one of 2023’s best albums — construct a brilliant and bruising utopia on “Nation of Mind,” a place “safe from the cops” and where bloodied knuckles have time to heal. Hip-hop gets airtime, too: the wails of revolutionary underground noise-rap artist B L A C K I E on “CREEP” bring a flayed urgency to the distorted, bass-heavy track. And “Fishes To Fry” demonstrates a new, industrial dimension of N.Y.C. rap duo and recent GEN F stars YL & Starker. The heaviest track on the whole tape comes at the end with “WINGS WHEELS STEEL,” a King Yosef-featuring stunner that veers into metal by way of Pharmakon-style abrasion.
There are only two tracks on Corpus II that do not feature any guests: the cyberviolence of “It Burns,” and “Shelter,” with its knotty avant-garde rap. These would be good songs on their own, but the variety in the surrounding collaborations transforms them. Corpus II reminds us that Show Me The Body can build anything they want thanks to the crew they’ve assembled — whether in the background, on the track, or in the crowd.
