Dis Fig What to Make of These Mortal Hands
Released Oct 23, 2026 Thrill Jockey
Consensus forming 3 professional reviews Updated Nov 4, 2026
Mostly positive consensus
Consensus is still forming across 3 professional reviews. Dis Fig's What to Make of These Mortal Hands turns the clash between human tenderness and destruction into gripping, unstable sound.
How ChoruScore worksCritics' Top Tracks
The songs critics returned to most
The Snake You Built
2 critic mentions
“providing a cathartic and emotional release.” — The Line of Best Fit
Vorago
3 critic mentions
“Vorago" is another frightful journey which draws the listener in with sparse, ominous strings and a whispered narrative.” — AllMusic
Mystic One
2 critic mentions
“Mystic One” distills the white noise down to a solitary vocal performance and distant piano.” — The Line of Best Fit
Full critic consensus
Dis Fig's What to Make of These Mortal Hands turns the clash between human tenderness and destruction into gripping, unstable sound. Across three professional reviews, the album earns a 72.67/100 consensus score: critics admire its vocal invention and moments of beauty, while its deliberately oppressive intensity makes for a demanding, sometimes unsettling listen.
The strongest critical consensus centers on contrast. Intimate, confessional passages sit beside volatile noise, with Dis Fig reshaping her voice from fragile harmony to near-scream and using tension and release to make the transitions hit harder. “Vorago,” praised by all three critics, is the clearest standout, shifting from ominous textures into punishing distortion. “Ginko’s Way” offers a more solemn, almost devotional refuge, while “The Snake You Built” turns percussion, strings, synth, and vocal distortion into catharsis. Critics also single out the delicate build of “Psaltery” and the exposed vulnerability of “Mystic One.”
Reviewers differ more in emphasis than in their sense of the record’s purpose. Some foreground the technical command and carefully evolving textures; others stress how the album’s heaviness can feel overwhelming. Yet the critical consensus finds that extremity purposeful rather than empty: beauty and devastation coexist, and moments of reflection or tenderness sharpen the surrounding noise. For anyone weighing whether What to Make of These Mortal Hands is worth hearing, its best songs make a compelling case for a challenging work shaped by vulnerability, survival, and release.
Track Ratings
How critics rated each track, relative to this album (0-100). Only tracks that made critics feel something are rated.
Arrival
The Account (feat. ELDON)
Psaltery
Vorago
Ginko’s Way
The Snake You Built
I’ll See You in the Burning Sun
Mystic One
The Stone Awakens (feat. LUηG)
A Hundred Hands
Komorebi for Ele
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What Critics Are Saying
Deep insights from 3 critics who reviewed this album
Critic's Take
Dis Fig has become even more adept at manipulating her voice, both in delivery and in the mix. The best songs on What to Make of These Mortal Hands rarely linger in a single texture: “Vorago” grows crunchier and more punishing than anything she’s put out before, while “I’ll See You in the Burning Sun” pushes her shrieks to the brink. “The Snake You Built” finds its chills in a shimmering LFO synth brushing against uneasy vibrato. In “Ginko’s Way,” solemn harmonies, cathedralesque reverb, and cawing crows immerse the listener in a desolate place of sanctuary.
Key Points
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“Vorago” is the fiercest standout, building to a peak the reviewer calls more punishing than anything Chen has released before.
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The album’s core strength is how intimate acoustics, transformed vocals, and non-tonal textures shift between tenderness and cathartic noise.
Themes
Critic's Take
Dis Fig casts a wider, more outward scope on What to Make of These Mortal Hands, where quiet, intimate moments are fragile and confessional, and the cathartic, noisy parts grow heavier and more volatile. The best songs on What to Make of These Mortal Hands include “Psaltery,” which builds delicately into a full-scale attack, and “Vorago,” a frightful journey from ominous strings to a bludgeoning, distorted beat. Tender, naked, almost folky songs like “Ginko’s Way” and “A Hundred Hands” provide relatively calm moments of reflection between more confrontational, apocalyptic tracks.
Key Points
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“Psaltery” is a standout for its delicate build into Chen’s hair-raising screams and mesmerizing bass eruptions.
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The album’s core strength is the volatile contrast between fragile, reflective songs and confrontational, noisy catharsis.
Themes
Critic's Take
Dis Fig makes the best tracks on What to Make of These Mortal Hands feel like a confrontation between humanity’s capacity for beauty and destruction. “Ginko’s Way” showcases Chen’s vocals with fragile choral harmonies of almost devotional beauty, while “The Snake You Built” unleashes a dense collision of percussion, strings, and vocal distortion into cathartic release. “Mystic One” distills the white noise down to a solitary vocal performance and distant piano, its exposed vulnerability making the surrounding brutality almost more painful. Oppressive by design, the album’s extremity has purpose: devastation coexists with beauty, surviving alongside each other.
Key Points
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“The Snake You Built” is the most cathartic track, turning the album's carefully curated tensions into an emotional release.
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The album's core strength is making tenderness and hope tangible without surrendering its oppressive, unsettling extremity.