Panic Day has now replaced Taco Tuesday.

The phrase “experimental noise artist” would probably send even the most hardened metal heads running for their Black Sabbath hockey jerseys and Slayer board shorts. Some will see the experimental label and immediately want to make a crack about putting a microphone up to an air condition. High-five, bro. You knocked that one out of the park. Next you’ll be sending me that goddamn picture of a pile of branches and asking which black metal band name it is.

Experimental? Dark ambient? Power electronics? Where are the the same riffs we’ve heard dozens of times from hundreds of bands? How am I supposed to mosh to this? Words are scary! It’s weird! It’s different! We can’t have that! Well I’m here to say that, yes, we can and I’ve got two experimental noise artists to help me prove my point.

Gridfailure and Megalophobe have joined forces once again with their latest release Tasukete. While songs on the album like “Dear Fuckhead” and “Tension Benders” scrape and claw at your cerebral cortex, this video for their song Panic Day serves as the perfect introduction to their wonderful world of weirdness. The mixture of electronics and acoustics blends both the traditional and experimental music worlds perfectly. The atmospheric tone of the song combined with the frantic video footage makes for a terrifyingly beautiful experience.

Megalophobe describes the song as,

“An acoustic introduction to sustained anxiety. Floor toms beaten with abandon, obsessively repeated guitar loops, throat abusing imperatives to remain calm — what’s not calming about that? Recorded in the lounge at GRIDFAILURE’s The Compound, with both vocal tracks added later on, we stripped away almost all of the big electronics and amplifiers present on most of our other songs in favor of the physicality of acoustic instruments and tension. ‘Will it be okay?’ Yeah, probably not.”

 

And Gridfailure says,

“We shot this twice. We had initially filmed it on MEGALOPHOBE’s Forked Audio’s roof in Bushwick in July, with an end-of-days 110-degree heat index. However, I apparently discarded that footage, or perhaps it simply incinerated. We re-shot it one afternoon in October; I filmed clips on my way through the Bronx and Queens in to Ben’s joint in Brooklyn where we filmed most of this madness on the roof. Again.”

 

 

Tasukete is out now via Nefarious Industries. You can grab it here and be sure to check out Gridfailure and Megalophobe on Bandcamp.

 

(Full disclosure: One of my bands is on Nefarious Industries. Transparency for all!)