The band, wishing to step away from the more rock-centric sound that The Drones were known for prior to their final pre-hiatus album Feelin Kinda Free, utilized a range of obscure digital guitar effects, synthesizers, drum machines, and DAW software such as ProTools to create the music.

Written by Liddiard with contributions from other members, the lyrics have been described as apocalyptic and darkly humorous; tackling subjects such as technological advancement, political polarization, socioeconomic inequality, xenophobia, culture wars and many others.

"[9] The year following their hiatus, Liddiard and longtime bandmate Fiona Kitschin started writing material for a new project under the name for the record label (coined by Dan Kelly[10][11]) under which the last Drones album was self-released.

"[16] The explosions in "Two Afternoons," "A Laughing Death," and "Rubber Bullies" are glorious and frightening, so big they don't feel quite real, but there's a story trying to climb out of the noise, carried by Liddiard's weariness, his uncynical fatalism, but shaped by the counter-vocals of Kitschin and Dunn.

"There are elements of blues, psychedelic rock, and art-punk," wrote Liam Martin for AllMusic, "but TFS actively resist any concrete genre tags, which gives them the freedom to walk a familiar path before sharply turning into something else.

"[2] No Ripcord found the band on the album to be "less Gang Of Four than they are The Pop Group, a similar level of poetic critique and takedowns packaged and delivered with unsettling and risky discord, a veritable junkyard sculpture thoughtfully constructed from punk scraps, crusty psychedelia and a rhythmic articulation of ideas bred from the spoken word.

"[4] Chad Parkhill of The Quietus similarly noted "an unhinged and feral energy that pulses through these nine songs and goes beyond the considerable demented racket that the Drones are able to conjure at their finest: it’s less full-frontal sonic assault and more auditory guerrilla warfare, full of surprising textures and scrappy tones.

"[12] The speed at which the album was recorded also ended up influencing the themes that appeared on it: "We had to keep churning out material, [...] So whatever we were thinking about seeped into the music.”[12] He had also expressed his desire to step away from the more didactic lyrics he'd written for The Drones: "I just wanted to de-wank.

A scholarly approach reveals much deeper meaning in the lyrics, as they take stabs at online culture, politics, and the mess we're in as a species, yet they can be enjoyed on a surface level for their disorienting nature alone.

[27] On having the album compared by a certain interviewer to "a Twitter feed being directly plugged into your mind", Liddiard criticized what he saw to be the superficiality and moral/political polarization of social media users: "The anxiety is just so high, they just cry when they’re talking about it.

"[29] The song incorporates several personal details from Liddiard's own childhood in Perth,[26] and also explores economic inequality "as [he] yelps and spits irreverent lyrics capturing the violence all along the edge of the class divide.

"[32] Liddiard's vocal performance on this track has earned comparisons to that of Nick Cave in that "[t]here’s an awareness of the darkness, and a kind of sneering, self-effacing humor that drags syllables beyond their natural end.

[16] "Chameleon Paint", the first single from the album, "starts like it’s going to be synthpop, but layers fractured guitar lines over the groove almost immediately", and features a "singalong chorus" in which Kitschin & Dunn engage in vocal call and response with Liddiard.

"The Future of History" has been described as a "fuzz-laden rhumba [...] guitar strings bent to a choke as the track swings, a multi-syllabic hook melodically rapped over a warped and blocky kick drum.

"[22] The song sees the band take "a funkier turn"[2] on what has been further described as "[a] seriously demented dance tune, [which] grooves and bops along a maxed out beat, accompanied by percussive muted guitars and an unsettling cheshire cat grin of chattering bursts of distortion.

"[32] The fifth track "Two Afternoons" "attacks in a ferocious manner with squealing and screaming guitars fighting for space between extremely forceful drum work and chanting-esque vocals that create a hum that covers the sonic atmosphere.

"[16] On "Soft Power", a "sluggish garage blues number",[34] the band "[take] things down a notch as they once again find a pocket in a groove that pushes everything along and works very nicely with Lilliard’s [sic] unique vocal flow and ranting.

"[29] The song "blurs the line between present and post-apocalyptic states" and "finishes with a quiet goodbye to the characters of Happy Days and the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz",[32] while its lyrical themes "[cycle] from nuclear arms to class inequality to the impending release of Top Gun 2, unable to bring anything into focus.

"[32] In interviews, Liddiard stated that the song's title was a reference to the CIA project MKNAOMI "which used shellfish poisoning against enemy agents, which wasn’t made to kill them but make them feel dreadful and insane for a while.

"[32] Lyrically, the song takes the themes explored previously on "The Future of History" "to [their] logical conclusion: the post-apocalyptic wasteland that’s left after Silicon Valley’s tech lords’ accelerationist philosophy has burned the planet to a crisp.

[22] Described as being driven by a "total sense of calamity",[38] the song "details a world overloaded by advertising, run by “plutocrats and sycophants” and filled with “Foot long subdivisions/So cheap they won’t outlast/Your disapproval or their doormats”.

"[38] The stream of consciousness lyrics are delivered "[w]ith the conversational pace of a man telling a story" and consist of "the narrator’s impressions of his surroundings and the futility of the experiences he details [...] [,] ending the album with [...] an air of pensiveness, the last words being, “Oh.

[16] The Guardian writes: "The album title links “meatspace” – as Silicon Valley engineers derogatorily refer to the physical realm – with a neurodegenerative disorder called kuru, once found in the Fore people of Papua New Guinea.

Men would eat the muscles of the deceased, while women and children ate the brains, thereby inheriting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and pot-holing their own grey matter to such an extent that they lost control of their emotions and laughed themselves to death.

"[50] "Soft Power"'s video, released in November 2017, was partly shot in a disused studio "set up like an old House of Horrors" in Little Rock, Arkansas and featured the band members dressed in costumes.

[58] The Quietus noted that "[s]tarting a new project unencumbered by the Drones’ name or weighty reputation seems to have given Liddiard the freedom to jettison the last remaining trappings of rock traditionalism in his songwriting and let loose, with impressive results.

"[24] Robert Christgau reviewing the album for Noisey praised the contributions of the band's female members, without which Liddiard's "sociohistorical ravings might evoke a woke Nick Cave flexing his baritone."

Despite criticizing his lyrics as being "seldom head-on" in terms of history, he writes that "Liddiard's songs are more sociopolitically situated than less verbose types generally manage, plus there's a Trump number where an Oompa Loompa brandishes drones and nukes [...] In most rock, this kind of dark joke comes off cheap if not stupid.

"[23] More mixed reviews came from Exclaim!, who wrote that "[w]hile their debut record doesn't have the lasting power of King Gizzard or Tame Impala's best work, it still shows a group unafraid to take risks and get messy, and their exploration results in some interesting material.

Moody, claustrophobic and staggeringly self aware, like a sentient computer raised on Bill Hicks comedy specials, Howard Zinn, Black MIrror [sic] and Twin Peaks.