British industrial/EBM artist ESA is proud to release a new music video for the song ‘Pound Of Flesh’, taken from the artist’s recent album Sounds for Your Happiness out from July 5th via Negative Gain Productions label.
‘Pound of Flesh’ is the most ambitious cinematic journey from ESA to date. Shot on location in Bangkok (Thailand) during July 2025 with additional scenes filmed in Manchester UK, the video sees the participation of Tan Toafa Maneepasopchock (Gotham/Oceans 10) and Panita Hutacharern along with three other native Thai actors. ‘Pound of Flesh’ is in part a powerful and compelling narrative experience, alongside a love letter to Thailand. A country that has meant a lot to Blacker over the years.
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The story follows a troubled soul, tormented by inner demons, trapped within their own mental prison, happening upon a vehicle to allow astral projection from one body to another in a vain attempt to escape their own pain and anguish. From body to body, it soon becomes apparent that dwelling within a new host body is not the solution it might first appear to be. As time passes within the host, breakdowns begin to emerge and the demons that are tethered to the troubled now take up chase, culminating in a powerful and incredibly cinematic exorcism experience.
‘Pound of Flesh’ is a music film in 3 parts, both adventurous in script and energetic in its execution. The acting of Tan and Panita levels up further the Universe that Blacker is trying to achieve with the ESA multimedia experience.
Blood Incantation have finally released a preview into their forthcoming album, Absolute Elsewhere which sees its release next Friday via Century Media. Its first movement, ‘The Stargate’ is available today in its entirety across digital retailers and comes with an exquisite short film, The Stargate which was directed by award winning cinematographer Michael Ragen (Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities: The Viewing) and features mesmerising analog fluid effects by Chris Parks (The Fountain).
‘The Stargate’ Side One: A violent storm invokes the familiar before a grand cosmic key turn for a hint of sweeping scope to come with spiritual acknowledgement and accompaniment by Tangerine Dream’s Thorsten Quaeschning on synths on the song’s second tablet. Musically as violent as it is mediative, with subtle spoken passages flitting between Nicklas Malmqvist’s (Hällas) busy synthesiser keys and Mellotron strings invoking both the modern and ancient, and it is all given sharp focus by Arthur Rizk’s powerfully dynamic and enveloping mix. Blood Incantation depart Extreme Metal’s traditionally antiquated way-station, warping their way towards ‘Genre of One’ stature, as ‘The Stargate’ intones the disembodiment of consciousness itself, careening through the stargate towards Samsara-like reincarnation, punctuated by the occasional growl from Sijjin/ex-Necros Christos main-man, Malte Gericke.
‘The Stargate’ short film is unlike anything you have experienced before. It presents the saga of a mysterious artefact and its victims in a hallucinatory synthesis of science fiction and folk horror, where mind-bending imagery and unsettling atmospheres converge in a surreal tale of primeval blood magic, inter-dimensional travel and grotesque otherworldly technology beginning in the Dark Ages and journeying into voids of deep space.
Watch the video here:
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Absolute Elsewhere hovers at nearly 45 minutes, their longest full length recording yet, the album’s two movements – ‘The Stargate’ and ‘The Message’ – are as confounding as they are engaging, exponentially expanding upon the formulas laid down by their scene-shattering debut Starspawn (2016) and landmark follow up Hidden History of the Human Race (2019).
As Blood Incantation’s Paul Riedl tells, “Absolute Elsewhere is our most potent audial extract/musical trip yet; like the soundtrack to a Herzog-style Sci-Fi epic about the history of/battle for human consciousness itself, via a 70s Prog album played by a 90s Death Metal band from the future.” For inspiration, the group looked to the mid-70’s progressive rock collective, Absolute Elsewhere (best known as a celestial stopover for King Crimson drummer, Bill Bruford) as the album’s namesake. For the uninitiated, Absolute Elsewhere’s obscure 1976 album, In Search of Ancient Gods, was constructed as a musical accompaniment to the works of Chariots of the Gods author, Erich Von Daniken, and his theories of non-terrestrial humanoid prompts towards mankind’s evolution. The subject matter of which should serve as no surprise to anyone familiar with Blood Incantation’s cosmically philosophical leanings. But make no mistake, the four musicians working under the Blood Incantation banner for the past decade – guitarist and vocalist Paul Riedl, drummer Isaac Faulk, guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky and bassist Jeff Barrett – have successfully left the microgravity of genre behind and are re-writing the Rosetta Stone of extreme music with a new language entirely. Demonstrations like their 2022 all-synth show or 2024’s Roadburn Festival headlining appearance where they played back-to-back death metal and ambient made it clear: Blood Incantation have honed their abilities to go boldly where few bands have gone before, and reveal no signs of slowing down.
Absolute Elsewhere’s release comes alongside a 73 minute feature film All Gates Open: In Search Of Absolute Elsewhere which tells the story of their time in Berlin during the summer of 2023, while recording at the legendary Hansa Studios. It will be available on Blu-Ray with the album’s deluxe mediabook package and will also include the documentary’s original soundtrack, All Gates Open (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) which includes 60 minutes of exclusive new music distinct from the new album. This special edition will also include Blood Incantation’s 2023 maxi-single, ‘Luminescent Bridge’ for the first time ever on CD, and of course, Absolute Elsewhere in both standard and Dolby Atmos / 5.1 mixes, alongside exclusive liner notes, exclusive interviews, behind the scenes photos and a forward by Ross Dolan of Immolation.
It was in my early teens that I discovered goth, and Mick Mercer’s Gothic Rock Black Book was something of an early bible for me. Mercer has built a career on being a huge authority on the genre, and things in the post-punk sphere. So the fact that the latest release from History of Guns – a ‘maverick’ industrial act from Hertfordshire leads with a quote from Mercer, describing them as “by far, the most inventive UK band to have got their hands caught in the Industrial threshing machine,” is quite a strong sell. The strongest sell, of course, are the wares themselves, and highlighting just how unfettered by convention History of Guns are is the fact that Drug Castle isn’t just another video single, another lyric video, another ‘vizualizer’ (thank fuck). No, this is, they explain, ‘a short film for one of the more experimental parts of their latest album, Half Light, in which they take their instruments to the beach, and experiment with different audio and emotional frequencies, in an effort to contact beings from another world.’
If this sounds utterly deranged, the context counts for a lot, and to provide this, I shall quote at length:
‘Drug Castle was the nickname given to a facility in England where they used to conduct experimental, often unethical psychological procedures during the 60s and 70s. No one’s quite sure of its exact location, other than it was near the sea, and some of the sessions happened out on the beach. Different psychologists and psychiatrists could effectively book it out, and then take patients or unwitting volunteers down there for however long, and do whatever they liked. There are stories from people who received really helpful, life-changing treatment there, but it’s probably more famous for the awful horror stories and reports of extreme abuse and deaths. Apparently, there was very liberal use of experimental drugs and techniques, hence the nickname. One of the experimental treatments was called Frequency Therapy which involved using sonic frequencies to match or harmonise with emotional frequencies, which would cause a third frequency to be created which caused some quite profound healing and bizarre experiences. One survivor of a group of a group reported making contact with alien creatures.’
Sourcing information about ‘Drug Castle’ is virtually impossible, but then, that’s hardly surprising given the nature of the operation. We know that the CIA’s operation MK Ultra ran from 1953 well into the 1970s – but there’s also a lot we don’t know. This is how conspiracy theories are born – though the known existence of government conspiracies. While most of the documents relating to MK Ultra were destroyed, those which survived and were declassified, despite heavy redactions, contained staggering and truly terrifying revelations.
‘Staggering and truly terrifying’ happen to be fitting descriptors for this dark, challenging audiovisual excursion. Scaping, droning, groaning, tectonic-plate-shifting heavy industrial churns and grinding metallic noise and dissonance provide the sonic backdrop to a menacing spoken-word piece. The vocals layer upon on another and the experience grows increasingly uncomfortable. Strings swirl and build, but what may, done differently, be a soothing experience, creates nothing but tension.
The guys looks like they’re participating on some ritual as they sit, cross-legged, on a beach. That beach becomes the location of a washed-up emptiness further on, and then transition to acoustic-led neofolk-tinged darkness in the later parts of thee tune a dramatically alters the trajectory of this work. The pleasantry of the surroundings transition to unsettling territory.
It’s quite apparent that History of Guns have gone way, way deep into their excavations in shaping dark domains of Drug Castle. Dark and uncomfortable, this is remarkable art.
Totnes-scene post-rock/post-punk band Abrasive Trees, who have become regular features on the pages of Aural Aggravation, have announced the premiere of their latest work, ‘Mill Session’ – a short film featuring new songs, interview material and spellbinding visual art, all filmed within an ancient mill.
The five-piece, which includes Matthew Rochford and Ben Roberts from Bella Union project Silver Moth worked with a team of local professionals and producer Pete Fletcher from the Isle of Lewis to produce the 20-minute video which features two unreleased tracks ‘Star Sapphire’ and ‘Tao To Earth’.
As well as the new music there’s also a live version of the previously released ‘Kali Sends Sunflowers’ and interview material sprinkled through the film – guided by music journalist Andy Hill.
AA Visual artist Jess Wooller’s work has also been used throughout to produce a solid document of the band’s current creative direction. Filmed in a centuries-old mill in Totnes, the video was crowd-funded by fans of the band from several countries including Scotland, France, Belgium, and Germany.
Matthew said of the film: “We’d aspired to create this film after meeting earlier this year to discuss what we could and couldn’t do – given our commitments to all of our other creative projects. We had considered going into a recording studio but decided to do something completely different and release some of our new material in this way. Somehow it all came together with the right people at the right time and the right place. We received financial and practical backing from the Abrasive Trees community – so it’s a genuinely crowdfunded project”.
It’s an ambitious project from a musically ambitious band, and you can watch it here:
Lucrecia Dalt and I have shared much music with one another, and over the course of the many years of knowing each other and sharing stages, we decided to collaborate on the track ‘Tanto’ for Qalaq. We discussed a few ideas and wanted to keep it minimal, but maintain the form of a ‘duet’. We exchanged some music and she came up with a beautiful tape loop for the backbone of the track, through which we were able to find our vocal identities. It was a haunting, eerie, out-of-time tape loop, which she proposed after I had sent her the (Arabic) lyrics and a translation of them—and most importantly, their intention. The song is meant to evoke the feeling of ‘envy’ familiar to many people in developing nations.
Legs in an Eastern sewage, eyes in a Western fictitious paradise.
Erin Weisgerber and I decided to make a small film for this song. I had wanted to work with the incredible Stacey Desilier as a choreographer and dancer. We exchanged some ideas and I sent everyone some film references, to which everyone echoed back others, and from there we settled on a setting and imagery and actions and shot this film in the forests north of Tiohtia:ke / Montréal.
– Radwan Ghazi Moumneh –
Watch the video here:
Qalaq album cover Photo of the 2019 Beirut October Revolution by Myriam Boulous
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