REVIEW: Kumo 99 - PULL!

LA breakbeat duo lower their sights on their latest LP, but the highs remain as vertiginous as ever.

29:23 // February 23rd, 2026 // self-released

Kumo 99 offer a much more multifaceted experience than the digitally-adroit ravers they’re so easily billed as. Comprised of production wizard Nate Donmoyer (whose credits extend from Passion Pit to the Weeknd) and hardcore vocalist Ami Komai, the duo’s volatile mix of jungle, digital hardcore and industrial stylings is as prone to all-out aggression as to underscoring disarming moments of vulnerability. The band’s 2023 outing Headplate struck a perfect balance in this regard, offering a formidable set of cheap thrills if that was all you asked of it, but underscoring these with enough nuance and sensitivity that it’s seldom left my rotation since it dropped.

On its release, I wrote that HeadPlate‘s hooks and delivery were steeped in similar claustrophobic fervour to the since-disgraced Crystal Castles, and mused that that act had left a void no one had entirely filled (notwithstanding the Snow Strippers and Frost Children of the world, all power to them). Over time, Kumo 99 have come to replace whatever fractious ecstasy I once sought from Crystal Castles, offering a much more grounded voice whose frustrations, rage and anxiety are deeply humanising forces rather than the uncanny exhibitionism too often associated with high-octane electronic catchiness (chalk this up to Komai’s vast talent for pivoting from brutal excoriations to blunt confessionals Barely a week has passed since 2023 that I don’t tune into HeadPlate, and it stands tall among my highlight albums of this decade.

So that’s where the bar is. Quite the standard for the duo’s latest, PULL! to live up to — and it turns out that these expectations are far from helpful. Surprise dropped last week, this record offers a more evasive appeal than any Kumo 99 record so far. I went into my first listen expecting their most bombastic collection of roof-raisers to date off the back of its singles, which include its nastiest seether (”Eyesore”) and most torqued-out banger (”Down”), but these turned out to be entirely misleading.

While the two singles and the ferocious “Gaspipe” hold little back, the bulk of PULL! shies away from knockout punches and makes itself felt through agile shifts of pace and glancing emotional beats. Though it ultimately maps a similar emotional landscape to HeadPlate, this is easily Kumo 99’s least aggressive album and most contingent on subtle dynamics: the likes of “Sleet” and “The Distance between Me and You” are smart, slickly-realised tracks, but they hold little in store for a listener expecting maximalist thrills.

It’s hard not to miss the vitriol, especially given the album’s relatively subdued opening pairing, but PULL!‘s subtle gearshifts open up a number of exciting new possibilities. We hear this on “Memory w/out Pain”, the first major highlight where the duo take a plunge into trance, funnelling a high bpm into climactic progressions. However, every time the track verges on a kitsch peak, it cuts back and defers to Komai. She’s at her least ratty here, drawing the track back into a space of composure and subverting it with whimsical observations rather than driving up the adrenaline. You can gauge as much from her hushed tone and melodious cadences, but the lyrics round this off with a much more affirming tone than she typically opts for:

もっと強くなって
自分のことも守れるようになって
自信を持って
心も底から願ってね
君のことをずっと持って
いつまでも。。。

grow stronger
learn to look after yourself
keep confident
hope with all your heart
and never lose sight of who you are,
however far you go…

Hook for hook, this is already one of the most gratifying tracks on the record, but Komai’s delivery elevates it to one of the most original and uplifting tracks Kumo 99 have made to date: weaving away from a single, telegraphed moment of catharsis, the compassionate thread of her performance subverts predictable thrills in favour of something more nuanced and humane.

Much of the tracklist operates on a similar basis (minus the pounding builds), with the opener “Ten till too” and the midway pause-for-breath “Say It Again” in particular eschewing momentous resolutions. These come later in the album, chiefly in the form of “Down”, which remains one of the duo’s most propulsive songs to date, and the glittery hooks of the preceding “Cannonball”. The latter track is comfortably the most ‘pop’ track on the album, and it sees Komai shift into English-language narrations (as opposed to the Japanese lyrics she typically favours out of flat antipathy to any notion of English as a prerequisite for digestible expression). The immediacy that this adds to her note-perfect throwback to the angsty hairbrush-mic play of the early ‘00s (Fighting down the urge / picking up the phone / lying on the bed) proves a great fit for such infectious melodies.

“Cannonball” is a classic case of Kumo 99 using a bright palette to tease a deeply ambivalent mindset, but the contrast it makes alongside “Down” against much of the preceding tracklist underscores that ambivalence really is the order of the day on PULL!. This is not an album of earworms or ragers or dance fuel in the fashion of HeadPlate or Body N. Will: it touches on all of these, but declines to commit to any single suit. Almost every track here boasts a distinct appeal and while several repeat listens may be in order to pin down each in its turn, there’s enough to love here to warrant this. It’s a welcome addition to the band’s arsenal and certainly sounds distinctly them, but I wonder if they spread their chief strengths a little thin for it to stand as their defining statement.

7.5/10

Further listening:

Kumo 99 - HeadPlate
Haru Nemuri - Haru to Shura
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles II
Mandy, Indiana - URGH