Konrad Kinard doesn’t just drop an album, he drops a memory vault. War Is Family plays like a radio-drama beamed from a fallout shelter somewhere under 1960s Texas. Instead of leaning into nostalgia, he builds a sonic memoir that feels haunted, surreal, and too familiar for comfort. This isn’t background music; it’s the kind of project you sit with, because every track feels like another bunker door unlocking. Below is a track-by-track breakdown of this wild, unsettling, beautifully constructed experience.
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1. Born A Texan: The opener isn’t a song, it’s a warning shot. A beat, a few spoken words, and suddenly we’re pulled into Kinard’s childhood living under the shadow of Sputnik. It sets the rules: this album is personal, political, and brutally honest.
2. Better Red Than Dead: This one hits like a Cold War flashback reel. Drums grind under pedal steel guitar while Kinard narrates the paranoia that shaped his generation. He’s not exaggerating, the fear feels baked into the production.
3. Siddhartha Goes To Alabama: A left-field spiritual detour. Eastern philosophy crashes into Southern upbringing, almost like a kid trying to meditate while the news plays nuclear countdowns in the background. The mix of cello and harmonium is gorgeous.
4. Three Sisters: Short but eerie, like overhearing a memory. Feels like a folk tale cracked open and poured onto tape.
5. Red Ant Hill: One of the most textured tracks on the record. The drones, steel guitar, and slow-moving tension feel like standing barefoot on Texas dirt waiting for something to go wrong. There’s a quiet panic running underneath.
6. Daddy Bought A Gun: A tiny story with massive implications. Kinard lets the title do the heavy lifting, the spoken word feels like a kid retelling the moment he realized danger wasn’t hypothetical.
7. Assassination Postcard — Version 2: Like a collage of all the conspiracy-era imagery Americans grew up on. Grainy, noir-coded, and unsettling. The rhythm moves like a slow march.
8. The Bomb Shelter: Here’s where things get real. Kinard revisits the bunker his father built under their home. The track sounds claustrophobic, metal, static, and a low hum that doesn’t relax for a second.
9. Rockets: A burst of urgency. The drums push forward while strings pull in the opposite direction, capturing the adrenaline of living under constant threat.
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10. Berlin Preamble: A shift in geography but not in tension. Feels like the opening scene of a documentary filmed on cracked VHS tapes.
11. Surrounded Berlin: One of the album’s anchors. Long, slow, tense. The cello work here is insane, it feels like walking through fog with a map that’s lying to you. Kinard channels his time in Europe but ties it back to Texas’ fear-based upbringing.
12. Gaslight: Short, glitchy, like someone changing channels in the middle of a breakdown.
13. War Is Family: The title track. Heavy but controlled, almost calm in its delivery, like a person finally speaking out after decades of silence. Kinard’s whole thesis drops here: war wasn’t just politics, it was a relative who lived in the house with them.
14. The Rat Hole: Crunchy, distorted, and restless. Feels like crawling through memories he doesn’t want to revisit.
15. Dog Tags : A heartbreaking shift. Minimal guitar and low vocals paint the image of young soldiers who never got to grow up. It sits heavy.
16. Russian Bombers: Less a song and more a siren. Sound design meant to trigger the Cold War anxiety baked into the album.
17. Love Orgy Hot: A wild detour, surreal, chaotic, and strangely danceable. It’s like Kinard is reminding us that even in dark eras, culture still spiraled, twisted, and exploded in unpredictable ways.
18. Nuke The Russians: Intense, satirical, angry. A literal slogan from the era, thrown back at us as a sonic punch.
19. Sun Rises: A slow climb toward relief. The cello and harmonium create something that feels like an emotional exhale not hopeful, just less suffocating.
20. A Texas Summer Night (Closing Track): One of the most cinematic moments on the album. Warm, buzzing, electric like the sound of cicadas after surviving another day of fear. It’s a strange comfort, and the perfect closing shot for this emotional documentary.
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War Is Family is the kind of project that feels too real to ignore. Kinard doesn’t preach, he remembers. And those memories hit harder than any commentary ever could. It’s experimental, but grounded. Personal, but universal. Terrifying, but human. For anyone who grew up with news broadcasts shaping their worldview, this album might feel uncomfortably familiar. For everyone else, it’s a history lesson told by someone who lived inside the anxiety.
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