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Mad God Premiere Lyric Video for “I Created God” from Grotesque and Inexorable LP

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Semi-psych dirt sludgers Mad God are taking preorders now via Bandcamp for their sophomore full-length, Grotesque and Inexorable. The six-song/47-minute long-player follows the Johannesburg, South Africa, trio’s 2017 debut, Tales of a Sightless City, and boasts Lovecraftian themes and a horror-minded atmosphere worthy of the occasion. Amps tuned to 666, riffs a-murky and a plod in Pat Stephansen‘s drumming that finds ground beneath the floating, visibility-zero haze surrounding — it’s got all the makings of stoner ritualism, yet manages to balance its influences from earlier Electric Wizard, with a traditional doom sensibility, guitarist/principal songwriter Tim Harbour offsetting effects-drenched moans with cleaner, clearer vocals in the shifts between songs like “The DeZalze Horror” and the particularly memorable, Manson-themed “I Created God,” the lurch of which you can experience for yourself in the lyric video premiere below.

Whether it’s marching rhythm of that track, given low-end heft via the bassworkMad God Grotesque and Inexorable of Evert Snyman, or the purposeful force-your-head-under-muddy-water deep-dive of opener “Haunting the Graves of the Unhallowed,” there’s a clarity of purpose and intent that underscores the slow-motion onslaught, and there’s an emergent sense of atmosphere especially as the album plays out subsequent to that opener that by the time they get around to “The Crawling Chaos,” fourth of the six inclusions, sees a progressing change in the shape of the record’s personality. I don’t know if they’re following a narrative arc from one song to the next, but the flow between tracks speaks to Grotesque and Inexorable as a linear work despite its obvious vinyl-readiness. The arrangement of the songs with three eight-plus-minute cuts on side A and three shorter (not by much, but still) pieces on side B speaks a platter-ist mindset as well, but the point is the album flows either way.

Though perhaps “churns” would be a better word for what it does, since Mad God seem mostly to be stirring a doomly cauldron with their material, sending slow undulations rippling outward as they make their repetitive motions with the aforementioned shifts along the way. The closing salvo of “No Prayers, No Fires” and “The Hunt Begins” reinforces the ethereal presence in Harbour‘s vocals and chugs to oblivion, leaving the bounce in the finale as a kind of revelry of the damned that not only echoes the movement of “I Created God” in the same position or rounding out side A, but pushes further along the same line, dragging the audience into a horror-infused, radioactive creep.

Grotesque and Inexorable arrives Nov. 2. Please enjoy “I Created God” below, followed by more info from the PR wire:

Mad God, “I Created God” lyric video premiere

Johannesburg’s purveyors of sludgy-stoner-doom Mad God are set to release their second album Grotesque and Inexorable on the 2nd November. As a little taste for things to come they’ve unveiled a lyric video for the track I Created God taken from the album.

“This song was written after watching a Charles Manson documentary following his death in 2017. This song does not condone the actions of the cult leader but rather delves into the psyche and motives of both him and his followers around the time of the murders that took place in 1969.” – Tim Harbour

Mad God is:
Tim Harbour – Vocals and Guitar
Pat Stephansen – Drums
Evert Snyman – Bass

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One Response to “Mad God Premiere Lyric Video for “I Created God” from Grotesque and Inexorable LP”

  1. Deezy says:

    Making me all proud to be south african over here. Definitely my favourite local band. Seeing them with Ruff Majik and Mouse next month – can’t wait!

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