Set of All Sets
Genre Good
Experimental
Noise
Intense
Long Commitment
CultThe review
Fourteen years after their last record, this reunited Brooklyn noise-punk outfit returns with a sprawling, double-drummer double album that critics describe as anthemic rather than merely abrasive — a rare trick for a band built on distortion and electronic squall. Reviewers single out the rhythm section's muscularity and the band's knack for turning noise into hooks, calling the record a widescreen, high-energy listen that holds attention across its unusually long runtime.
That same scale draws the most pushback. At seventeen tracks and well over an hour, several reviewers note the album leans on one register — a relentless, cathartic intensity — for nearly its entire length, which some find exhilarating and others find wearing by the back half. A smaller thread of criticism points to the lyrics, with at least one reviewer arguing the record's emotional impact is blunted by writing that reads as more stylized than sincere.
Critics are largely aligned on the album's ambition and its sonic conviction; the real disagreement is about stamina — whether an hour-plus of maximalist noise-pop sustains itself or overstays its welcome, and whether the lyrics carry enough weight to match the music's size. Coverage so far skews toward genre-specialist and underground music press rather than mainstream outlets, consistent with a band whose core audience has always been noise and punk loyalists first.
Who it's for
Listeners with a taste for noise-punk, no-wave, and maximalist indie rock who want melody and hooks buried inside distortion rather than pure abrasion. A good fit for anyone nostalgic for 2000s Brooklyn DIY who wants to hear that scene's energy applied at a bigger scale, and for fans of records that commit fully to one intense mood rather than varying pace.
Who it's not for
Listeners who want concise albums or frequent tonal shifts may find the length and unrelenting intensity fatiguing well before the end. Anyone drawn to music primarily for lyrical nuance or emotional subtlety may come away wanting more from the words than the sound. — heavy/bleak themes · intense/loud sound
Birds of a feather...
- MusicA ? of WHEN (2026)
Both albums push maximalist, dense production toward the edge of listener fatigue, treating sonic saturation and loop-based repetition as the primary vehicle for catharsis rather than dynamic contrast or lyrical clarity.
78% - MusicAurora (2026)
Shares the scale-as-thesis-statement structure — maximal density and sustained ambition functioning as the album's own argument for continued relevance after a long gap — with a similar critical split over whether the commitment to bigness pays off or becomes excess.
78% - MusicDemand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! (2026)
Both albums use dense, maximalist repetition and recombination of small units as their core structural logic, rewarding sustained structural listening over hook-based payoff, and both foreground collective/ensemble interlock as thematic content.
75% - Musicin grief or in hope (2026)
Shares the source's commitment to sustained intensity and duration-as-catharsis, using abstraction over confessional lyric detail to universalize emotional weight, though its palette is stripped-down rather than maximalist.
70% - MusicReality Awaits (2026)
Maximalist density and refusal of dynamic contrast as the album's central formal thesis, plus a 'noise made anthemic' hybrid that echoes the carnival-over-dread tension, though its lyrical register is more abstract.
62% - MusicMagazine (2026)
Comes from the same no-wave/noise-rock lineage and shares an interest in tension between chaos and control, though it pursues extreme compression where the source pursues extreme scale.
62% - MusicI Built You A Tower (2026)
Both records use maximal density and long runtime as a deliberate formal argument, asking listeners to experience the album as an immersive single environment rather than discrete tracks, trading dynamic variety for sustained atmosphere.
60% - MusicShallow Hits (2026)
Built on the same principle of contrast-as-structure -- bright maximalist surfaces against darker undercurrents -- and shares the critical fault line of ambition/breadth possibly outpacing a unifying emotional throughline.
55% - MusicSpontaneous Music Live (2026)
Both foreground collective musical momentum over individual hooks and ask listeners to treat extended duration and non-resolution as the point rather than a flaw, appealing to the same endurance-oriented listener.
50% - MusicBingo! (2026)
Also builds tension through sustained intensity and structural excess rather than dynamic contrast, though it leans into noise-rock endurance and abstraction rather than Bingo!'s tight, danceable irony.
50%