Oakland, California based Sentient Ruin Laboratories is about to release “Powerless”, the debut album from Richmond, VA-based harsh industrial metal deconstructors HOLD ME DOWN on LP/MC/digital formats on May 6th, and today we’re pleased to join the pre-release party with a noisy new track premiere above! The band is among other things the new endeavor by JG, one of the members who was behind now dormant Virginia-based industrial/black metal duo and early Sentient Ruin alumni American.
The album has been unveiled officially by iconic Industrial outlet ReGen Magazine, who’ve premiered the music video for the song “STK” stating that the band’s video is a “frenetic visual accompaniment for the song’s mix of dissonant electronics, discordant guitars, and demonic vocalizations” – you can check out the feature and song/video below.
Richmond, VA-based harsh industrial metal deconstructors Hold Me Down reanimate their design for total sonic retaliation through their latest creation, “Powerless“, a debut full-length ofering of caustic post-industrial punishment and complete sensorial undoing which follows brilliantly in the steps of their transformative 2019 Sentient Ruin-issued self-titled demo tape.
As is now commonplace with bands and their releases associated with Sentient Ruin, an aura of ambivalence, reverence and transformation enshrouds this work, with the echoes of legendary industrial acts like Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Godfesh and Swans reverberating from the past and undergoing a future-projecting metamorphosis, as present time contaminants (power electronics, blackened noise, death industrial) enter the picture in an aberrant recombination of stylistic DNA, paving the way to groundbreaking and grim sonic transfgurations.
Throughout its ten cold bursts of synthetic mechanized dissolution Hold Me Down explore concepts of withdrawal, personal failure, societal fracture and emotional unravelling through a bleak post-industrial disassociation where disorienting drum machines, vitriolic metal guitars, bleak soundscapes and oppressive electronics instigate a depersonalizing collapse within the listener.
