Many Blessings Compresses Horror Into Shorter Forms on Acts of Service

Acts of Service opens with rain, gray light and a low industrial hum that does not resolve so much as settle into the listener. “Cinema Noir” sets those terms in a couple of minutes, and Ethan Lee McCarthy does not need longer than that to make a room feel wrong.

Many Blessings is McCarthy’s experimental electronics outlet, separate from the doom and sludge of Primitive Man and the aggression of Vermin Womb. Where those bands work through force and volume, this project operates by minimal means: drone, harsh noise, ambient texture, electronic rhythm. On “A Bastard Weeps,” a gnarled metallic drone gives way to piano strikes that land heavy and decaying. “Antique Ear Canal” begins in crackling static before distorted bass swallows it. The tension comes from restraint as much as from noise.

The record also marks a structural shift. Following True Love, McCarthy again favors a larger number of shorter tracks, in contrast to 2020’s Emanation Body, which stretched a handful of pieces across a longer span. “Brain Burns” runs under a minute and a half and still holds its atmosphere. The compression does not cost the album its grip, it changes the shape of it, which is the useful thing to notice here: a project whose whole premise is immersion testing how little time that immersion actually requires.