In the run-up to today’s release, fakemink had promised the world and more from Terrified. Earlier this year, he told us it would be ahead of its time; earlier this month, amid swirling criticism of his live performances, he claimed the album would force critics into “the most aggressive public backtracking of [their] careers”; and, earlier this week, he sold Zane Lowe a complex, Dante’s Inferno-esque narrative of “going through hell to get to heaven.” So, did it live up to the hype? While rumours of a “secret feature” turned out to be unfounded – who would say that?! – Terrified is certainly an epic body of work.

True to fakemink’s words, the new album places storytelling above all else. At its core, Terrified is a tale of innocence lost in the 22-year-old’s rapid rise to fame over the last two years, which saw him transported from his quiet home in Essex to the lap of LA luxury: mingling with superstars like Drake and Frank Ocean, partying with supermodels, and living in Hollywood’s “haunted” Chateau Marmont hotel. Much of this narrative is only indirectly present on the album, instead unfolding through 27 self-described “tales” on a website launched alongside today’s release. There, fakemink frames “fame as a decent [sic] rather than ascension”, casting it as something that has transformed him into a devil, while describing himself frantically clutching onto childhood keepsakes – notably Pokémon X – from before The Fall. In the final diary entry, also released as an 11-minute short film starring LA socialite Victoria Davidoff, mink appears to confront hell itself in the Lynchian backrooms of the Chateau.

As for the sonics themselves, fakemink has spoken at length about how Terrified’s journey from hell to heaven manifests in the gradual removal of low-end frequencies throughout the project’s 55-minute runtime. Truth be told, though, given fakemink’s penchant for musical rule-breaking, this is not immediately obvious. For the most part, Terrified stays true to the heady intersection of cloud rap and electronic pop – increasingly being referred to as “sleazepop” – that has coloured much of mink’s output over the last 12 months, while his usual tropes of pitch-shifted vocals, distortion and jerk drum patterns are still very much present here. There is not much in the way of an “Easter Pink” or “LV Sandals”-level underground hit, but Terrified also feels like the kind of project that will grow with time, with choice one-liners – “Making money off your bitch ‘cus I live in her playlist” – and continued vocal experimentation gradually rising out of the chaos on repeated listens.

Terrified’s greatest achievement is how it manages to ground and add depth to fakemink’s hedonistic sound, which some detractors have previously dismissed as one-dimensional and superficial. It’s a window into the rich inner-world that has always made fakemink such a singular voice on the UK Ug scene, and also a sharp commentary on the trappings of young stardom. For all fakemink’s musings of fame as a descent, Terrified is a bold step towards the quote-unquote ‘serious artist’ he’s always wanted to be. Below, we break down our five favourite tracks.

5. “HARD CANDY”

“Hard Candy” sounds like a familiar fakemink song – for the first ten seconds. Opening with mink’s signature jerk drum pattern and EDM-pop synths, the track soon fans out into a maximalist deluge of whip-crack snares, overlapping melody lines and pitched-up vocals that are more chipmunkified than ever before. If the first seven songs represent the seven deadly sins, then “Hard Candy” is gluttony: an ego-fuelled sugar rush that necessitates the emotional comedown that follows.

4. “KISS OF DEATH” 

Beginning a trio of emotionally vulnerable tracks after the seven-minute Victoria Davidoff-narrated interlude “Fire & Ice,” “Kiss of Death” is where Terrified truly begins to reveal fakemink’s musical growth. Opening with a faintly melodic refrain and closing on an electric guitar riff, the track seems to mark mink’s transcendence of the seven rings of hell that shape the project’s first half, both thematically and sonically. It initiates a profound pay-off that continues through “Creed” and “Tell Me What You’re Missing,” while also capturing Terrified at its most replayable.

3. ”LIKE A VIRGIN” 

“Like A Virgin” casts fakemink in the throes of the material excess that forms Terrified’s narrative backbone. Every fibre of the track is fraught with tension, from its tremulating synth melody and organ stabs that feel lifted straight out of a horror film, to a kaleidoscope of lyrical refrains that frantically oscillate between terror and pride. Fakemink has long compared his musical process to directing a movie, and this is most apparent on “Like A Virgin”: it is a confronting listen.

2. “CREED .” 

Foregoing mink’s signature distortion and pitched-up vocals in favour of a front-and-centre piano melody and Auto-Tuned lyrics, “Creed” is an outlier on both Terrified and mink’s catalogue as a whole. Seemingly written about a break-up with a girl he claims “could have been his wife,” its stark minimalism – or, rather, lack of maximalism – presents fakemink at his most vulnerable, wallowing in his feelings as he laments “the pressure and pain of the life that I chose.”

1. “TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE MISSING”

Terrified is most interesting in its final moments, when fakemink appears to have transcended the seven rings of hell and begun his ascent towards heaven. It is here that much of the album’s distortion is washed away, revealing the fruits of the experiments in vocal melody and more diversified songwriting that he explored on previous EP The Boy Who Cried Terrified.

“Tell Me What You’re Missing” — an early standout from last night’s west London listening party — is Terrified at its most forthcoming, and also its best. From its emotionally wrought, harmonised hook to lyrics that seem to encapsulate the project as a whole (“A whole lot of white suede and short fuses / Drug users and beautiful muses”) it feels like a powerful pay-off after the album’s previously submerged and distorted tracks, and one that leaves us excited to see where mink might venture next.

Check out the gallery above for a look into last night’s Terrified listening party in west London.