Through Zegema Beach Records‘s offshoot tape label Tomb Tree Tapes, comes AMBIEN, a project birthed in the basement recording studio of Virginia resident Pablo Cabrera. The studio, Analog Approach, has been recording local bands for years, including Ostraca, Truman, and .gif from god, and now it’s adding a great new release to its portfolio, AMBIEN’s new EP “Visitations“. The atmospheric amalgam of metalcore and post hardcore hits the streets via Tomb Tree Tapes on August 24th, 2021, and today we’re thrilled to give you an exclusive listen of one of the new songs called “Torture The Sky”, giving you a perfect example of what to expect from the full release: epic passages, hearty, tension building sections and explosive bursts of bleak energy. You’ll love it from the very first minute.
In the very beginnings of AMBIEN, Pablo approached Tommy Sheffield, the ex-vocalist for the Virginia screamo band Kilgore Trout, who hadn’t been in a band for ten years, since he was in Kilgore Trout in high school. Pablo had a single song – the guitar, bass, and drum parts for which he’d recorded all himself – and asked Tommy whether he’d be willing to do vocals. They recorded the song, and jammed it for a while, and then Jesse, a friend of Tommy’s, heard it. They immediately wanted to be involved with the project, and were brought in to record some guitar parts and vocals. After the first EP was done, the band had formed, and things were good.
Then they all got real busy, and started working their respective jobs. For several years they worked on and off on their next EP, Visitations, and, with the addition of a new guitarist, Jasiu, the band took a new shape. With Jesse and Jasiu bringing in guitar parts and Pablo recording the drums and bass, Tommy would then write lyrics during practice while the other instruments were tracking and then record his vocals at the end of the day.
Visitations is an album inspired by the story “Nyarlathotep” by HP Lovecraft.
The album’s lyrics are written from the perspective of various individuals who have been manipulated by Nyarlathotep into losing their minds, and this even shifts as far back in time as Ancient Greece (“Likeness of a Wasp”), and also touches on subjects such as property, inheritance, and Donald Trump (“Within the Noise”).
Many of the songs focus on psychological manipulation and how that can manifest in our lives, and it also depicts the experiences of a specific town of people whom Nyarlathotep convinces to drown themselves in a lake outside the town (lyrics in “Torture the Sky” and “Green Moon”).
By the end of the album, the final song ends with a slow ambient outro meant to reflect the feeling and reality of having lost one’s mind, where what’s left is merely a few droning tones, and then silence – the absence of what once was. Much of the album deals with these ideas, though imagery and metaphor, thematically centered around the image of a green moon, a specific image mentioned in “Nyarlathotep” by H.P. Lovecraft.
The lyrics are meant to be able to be read as poems, but also to function as lyrics when put to music; Tommy takes influence from mewithoutyou in that respect. As a band, Ambien takes a lot of influence from post-metal bands like Cult of Luna and O’Brother, screamo bands like pg. 99 and Majority Rule, and post hardcore bands like mewithoutyou and Pianos Become the Teeth. The result is, well, hard to describe. But they hope you like it.
Cassettes /100:
– 31 on beige/black/white swirl
– 25 white
– 20 on copper swirl
– 16 on blue swirl
– 5 test dips w/matching swirl case
– 3 blue w/sparkle swirl
