Got nine minutes to spare? Then get your sack whipped by Apocalyptic Noise Syndicate
Are you the kind of person who drinks hot coffee while walking down the street because you’re too far too busy and important, Mr. Bigbusiness McMoneybags, to enjoy a warm beverage and a moment of quiet self-reflection? Is the ideal grocery shopping trip an order from AmazonFresh because you can’t be bothered to transport your languishing tuchus from your computer desk to your car to a rascal at Walmart? Do you lack the time, attention span, and virility to enjoy an 18-minute funeral doom track? Can’t spare a minute browsing awful t-shirt meme posts on Facebook to press play on a song longer than five minutes? Then, my hair-trigger tempered amigo, have I got just the thing for you.
Slaves to the Waking Nightmare is a sub-9-minute (8.41666667-minute to be more scientifically precise) butthole-ripper of an album via Texas Gulf Coast grinders Apocalyptic Noise Syndicate. Aside from the odd movie sample, it’s nine minutes of pure, 100-proof, butt-chopping aggression with so many riffs you’ll spend at least five of those nine minutes wondering where they’re hiding all those riffs. If you accomplish nothing else in your day, at least do one thing of value and listen to Slaves of the Waking Nightmare.
So what exactly will you find if you do cancel your pathetic lunch plans and instead eat a greasy, artery-annihilating meal of Texas grind with Apocalyptic Noise Syndicate? A dense-ass pâté of slightly-dissonant grind that, on first listen, bears a striking similarity to Morgue Supplier and Tumba de Carne, to name but two. Where Slaves to the Waking Nightmare differs from those particular bands and their slaughterhouse approach to the genre is the surprising (given the 9-minute run time) balance ASN finds between the style’s death and punk roots. While tracks like “Design Corrosion” and “Economic Death Machine” lean hard into the modern, off-kilter Napalm Death approach, with plenty of butt-gristle-searing solos, jarring pitch-harmonics, and more blasts than you can shake a stick at (an exhausting effort if you’ve never tried shaking a stick for nine straight minutes, mind you), other songs, like “Disillusioned by Salvation,” indulge a Trash Talk-esque flair for skank beats and crusty mosh pits. You’ll even find the odd bit of Power Trip-informed thrash riffs thrown in just for the hell of it, because if you’re shoveling a ground-up meal into your gullet in just nine minutes, you’re certainly not going to be fretting over the origins of all those delicious hunks of meat.
You could easily waste nine minutes of your day talking to your parents on the phone or batin’ or pretending you’re actually accomplishing something at work by sending off-color, non-HR-approved jokes via Slack. OR you could do something worthwhile for once and listen to Slaves to the Waking Nightmare. You owe it to yourself.
You can purchase the album here via Absolute Contempt and learn more about the band here.
