If Frank Zappa dropped acid in a TikTok algorithm and woke up in a cyberpunk DMV run by sentient SoundCloud rappers, he might hallucinate something close to Zach Tabori’s Attack of The Clout Chasers. This album is fucking nuts—in the best possible way.

From the opening seconds, Tabori makes it clear: there will be no genre loyalty here. No warm-up. No safety. Just raw, unfiltered creativity pumped full of satire, weird jazz time signatures, and genre left-hooks. We’re talking operatic breakdowns followed by trap hi-hats, vaporwave detours, surf-rock licks, synth-funk freakouts, orchestral stabs, and then… silence. But only for a second. Because Zach’s already ten steps ahead, launching into some next-level commentary about influencer culture or political decay, all while ripping a guitar solo that sounds like it’s melting sideways.

photo by Angelo Kritikos

But hold up, you probably already thought this was just sonic anarchy with no brakes. Understandable. The cover art screams meltdown, the tracklist reads like a meme conspiracy, and the first few minutes hit harder than a caffeine-overdosed jazz band falling down a staircase. But beneath the madness, there’s method. Clout Chasers is a concept album, loud, twisted, razor-sharp. part satire, part sci-fi prophecy, part sonic middle finger. Zach’s dissecting the parasitic nature of social media fame, the commodification of identity, the collapse of political idealism, and the way American culture seems determined to consume itself. And he’s doing it while gleefully setting fire to every rulebook in sight.

The production is pristine, which makes the insanity hit even harder. You can hear the Dweezil Zappa influence in the compositional ambition, but this goes far beyond a simple cosplay act. Tabori is too self-aware, too in command of his tools. The transitions are surgical—even when the content is deliberately grotesque. One minute you’re in a psych-pop hook that could chart, the next you’re drowning in a dissonant horn section that sounds like Parliament Funkadelic and Mr. Bungle got into a bar fight.

That is why the 10 tracks from the album cannot be assigned to any one genre — and the very concept of “genre” was merely a starting point for Zach Tabori, nothing more. Attack of The Clout Chasers is a mix of psychedelia and jazz, prog rock and musique concrète, acoustic fragments, collage, sound design, mockery, and orchestral bombast.

“Rotten” is minimalist acoustic — just voice and guitar — with a deceptively calm delivery. The track might seem meditative, but in reality, it’s sharply unsettling, like thoughts whispered before a sleepless night. Pure existential anxiety, without any pretension.

Then it slams straight into a wall — “Nann Ray,” a prog-punk-rock piece shaped as a post-apocalyptic audio-collage phantasmagoria about World War III and an invasion from other dimensions. Frenzied, furious, multilayered. Everything turned up to the maximum.

“…In A Thin White Shirt” continues the prog assault, but this time with a clearly defined theme. It’s a biting satire on sexuality and gender norms. The sound is wild, sharp, unpolished. Everything is deliberately overacted — and it works.

On “JFK,” Tabori pulls out the scalpel and slices into the American myth. Psychedelic prog with dense rhythmics, tinged with old-school flavor, but delivered from a position of contemporary cynicism. There’s both a historical reference and a personal provocation — through the theme of the Kennedy family’s sympathies for the Third Reich.

photo by Angelo Kritikos

“NYC” is a panic audio-show. The tempo crushes, guitars shriek, vocals dissolve into noise textures. This is a song about a city eating itself alive, and Tabori quite literally dissolves into the sound. The result is a personal, ironic, and disturbingly honest confession of love and hate toward the most mythologized metropolis in America.

“Let’s Get Sick Together” is an experiment where melody breaks, flips, and reassembles into a different form. There’s almost no “track” here — just process. It’s one of the freshest moments on the album: it sounds like an internal dialogue between music and itself.

And “End Of The Fucking World” is the final chord — and holy hell, it hits like a concrete wall of melancholy. Warm and dark at the same time, with these massive, swelling guitars, hazy dream pop vocals, and an orchestral finale that doesn’t try to go big for the sake of drama — it just locks in with this brutal, razor-sharp sincerity. This track is bleak. Like, Nirvana-at-their-most-frayed level bleak. It’s pissing sadness, doom, and existential nausea in high fidelity. Also, there’s a full-on ballet video for it, co-directed with Stephanie Gotch and former American Ballet Theatre soloist Gabe Stone Shayer — because sure, why not.

Attack of The Clout Chasers is a rare case where the artist operates as composer, director, critic, and madman — all in one.

Vocally, Zach switches personas like a method actor on a sugar crash. He croons, shouts, whispers, preaches, mocks. He’s a narrator in the ruins, holding up the shattered mirror and asking you if you recognize your reflection—filtered, hashtagged, branded, optimized.

There are moments that overstay their welcome, ideas that collapse under their own ambition, but honestly? That’s part of the thrill. This is a record that dares to trip over itself while sprinting toward the edge of modernity. It’s flawed in the same way The Wall or Trout Mask Replica are flawed—because it’s human, and messy, and reaching for something bigger than perfection.

Attack of The Clout Chasers is a satirical prog-funk-metal-pop-psych monster with its brain wired to the internet and its soul dangling off the edge of Western civilization. It might overwhelm you. It might confuse you. But it will make you feel something. And in a landscape of copy-paste playlists and algorithmic sludge, that’s a fucking gift.

*This review was made possible by SubmitHub