By all conventional metrics: structure, genre cohesion, basic artistic restraint, Culinary Vendetta by Rubbish Party should not work. It is a deeply unserious concept delivered with unnerving sincerity. It is emotionally volatile music wrapped in what can only be described as an aesthetic best understood by those who’ve felt nostalgic grief over a dead Flash game.
And yet… it slaps.
It doesn’t “start” so much as manifest, like a haunted CAPTCHA that plays alt-rock-meets-funk instead of asking you to identify traffic lights. It’s less an album and more an incident; like it’s just something that happened to you, that you can’t quite prove occurred. Eight tracks, neatly contained, just long enough to change your internal weather system, not long enough for Stockholm Syndrome to kick in. And that? That’s not just good pacing. That’s restraint, baby. That’s taste right there.
Sonically, Culinary Vendetta sounds like alt-rock and funk raised on dial-up internet and nihilist cartoons; twitchy, groovy, and just barely holding it together. It’s like stumbling into a nightclub from a defunct internet forum: distorted, syncopated, and vibrating with the kind of charisma only bands on the verge of implosion or transcendence can muster.
But what makes it stick isn’t the chaos. Rather, it’s the clarity. Beneath the fuzz and warped vocals is production that’s crisp, clean, and shockingly precise. Every jagged riff and glitched-out beat feel intentional, like someone meticulously engineered a breakdown to be both cathartic and danceable.
At the heart of Culinary Vendetta is Von Berg: a frontman, lyricist, and someone whom I would say is the sort of guy who owns multiple analog tape machines and uses all of them. He doesn’t sing so much as transmit feelings through some cracked vessel of postmodern regret. His voice is half-diary entry, half audio hallucination: something between a whispered confession and a love letter that got lost in a junk drawer and reemerged two decades too late. It’s fragile and focused, like he’s trying to say something important before it dissolves under the weight of the reverb.
And then the twist: it bangs. Like, legitimately. You come for the weird catharsis, and suddenly you’re bobbing your head like you’re in a basement show hosted by ghosts with excellent rhythm. The riffs grind. The basslines move like they’re trying to start a bar fight in your heart. The drums are tight enough to hold the whole thing together, but loose enough to imply they’re not above quitting and starting a noise project instead. It’s alt-rock-meets-funk filtered through existential angst, and it grooves way harder than it has any right to.
What sticks with you after Culinary Vendetta ends isn’t the chaos; it’s the ache at the center. The raw, unfiltered yearning woven into every shout, every plucked string, every warbled hook. This album isn’t trying to impress you. It’s trying to connect, through all its jagged edges and twitchy moments. It doesn’t care if you like it. It cares that you understand it. And that, in itself, is what makes it so powerful. Being messy doesn’t make something less real. In fact, it makes it more honest.
Because here’s the thing: Culinary Vendetta isn’t weird for weird’s sake. It’s not a gimmick or an ironic statement. It’s genuine. It’s raw. It’s messy in the way people are messy, especially when they’re reaching out for understanding, hoping someone’s listening.
This album shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t feel so precise, so intimate, so funky with how deranged its premise is. But somehow, against all odds, it does.
If you haven’t already, listen to it. Because this isn’t just music: it’s art with a bassline. And trust me, you don’t want to miss it.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
