With Robert Galbraith’s decisive programming and the ever ethereal whispering vocals of Elizabeth Virosa they leap forward with an intense and unrelenting album.
An intense and unrelenting album
Marching forth with a monstrous desire to crush, kill, destroy in the name of sonic discipline comes Devour by Snowbeasts. With Robert Galbraith’s decisive programming and the ever ethereal whispering vocals of Elizabeth Virosa they leap forward with an intense and unrelenting album.
“Distrust” opens with thudding beats as swirling layers of sound ebb and flow, weaving in and out of earshot. The title tracks’ slinky bass propels a robotic beat as the disorienting and intoxicating vocals dip through the mist. As you look around furtively for the speaker, the dark trance enfolds and finally gulps you up whole. “Velocity” moves at the steady pace of an ice breaker, unsafe this speed as it collides with your mind, building in crescendos of sound. “A Failed System” details the breakdown of an alien machine, unfolding and decomposing like a metal flower born of rust and decay. “What Are You Dreaming?” leaves the us wondering what’s real as a solid soul-driven backbeat loops under the reciprocating vocals, leaving you to decipher which is the echo, which is the dream, and what is real anyway.
Devour quite literally devours as it continues to carve a path of creative destruction.
“In The Teeth” is a slow-burning ember left too long in the ragged remains of some demolished building that ignites at the end with unleashed fury. “Unlock [Secret Mind]” tells the body to move with pulsating arpeggios and biting synths with a beat just hard enough to be heard in Berghain or any other den of iniquity with a PA and low lighting. “Immolation” ricochets through the ears with echoing synths, while a freight train beat barrels forward, casting off swirling vocals and metallic screeches like smoke from a burning locomotive.
Well described as “a journey through wounded and wild worlds,” the drums in “Catharsis” begin subtly, drawing you in with a deceptive calm—until the true weight arrives, building an atmosphere of slow, crushing doom. “Imprints” drops to low-rider speed as if the devil himself were blaring this from their chopped and dropped ride while demons coo and sway on the roadside to Hell. In closing, “Ancient Memories” wraps the album up with an ambient piece that evolves at its own pace, building into a powerful, final wave of sound.
Mastered by Robert Galbraith.
Art by Simon Paul.
Devour is available on Re:Mission Entertainment. [Bandcamp]
