In the summer of 2025, New York cyberpunks Lip Critic were putting the finishing touches on the follow-up to their acclaimed debut from the previous year, Hex Dealer, when they decided to shelve it—because, after a bizarre encounter with an overzealous fan who had stolen lead vocalist Bret Kaser’s identity online, the band found themselves with the thematic basis for an entirely new record. The result is Theft World, a quasi-conceptual examination of digital-era deception set to an exhilarating, genre-smashing soundtrack of industrial noise, street-rap bravado, and electroshocked hardcore. And the sense of delirium is only intensified by Kaser’s breathless vocal performances, which see him morph from a post-punk barker in the Fontaines D.C. mold to dancehall soundsystem toaster to black-metal growler, sometimes in the span of a single verse. But as sensory-overloading blitzes like “Legs in a Snare” and “Charity Dinner” attest, Lip Critic’s most subversive quality is their ability to crank out tracks that are as catchy as they are chaotic.