Absent in Body to Release Plague God March 25 on Relapse
If you were curious as to how Scott Kelly of Neurosis has spent the pandemic, this collaboration with Mathieu Vandekerckhove and Colin H. van Eeckhout of Amenra and Igor Cavalera (ex-Sepultura, Cavalera Conspiracy, Petbrick, etc.) would seem to answer the question. And yes, that’s all well and good — a band with pedigree. Amenra have released stuff through Neurot, toured with Neurosis and Deafbrick, on which Cavalera played, was on Neurot as well, so yeah, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that they’d collaborate at some point.
Honestly, what I have more trouble with here is the assertion that the band “formed in 2017.” Come on. Vandekerckhove and Kelly did a thing at that point, but they called the band Absent in Body and they called the record Plague God, and I have to wonder what’s wrong with just saying “this is a pandemic project?” Many, many people have seen lives and livelihoods upended, and everyone has been affected one way or the other. So maybe some creativity got routed into something new building on the one-off they’d done a few years earlier. From where I sit, that’s about the only good thing to come out of the last two years of this bullshit.
Video’s great. Of course it is. One more disc to buy:
ABSENT IN BODY (current and former members of AMENRA, NEUROSIS, SEPULTURA) ANNOUNCE DEBUT ALBUM, PLAGUE GOD, OUT MARCH 25
WATCH/PRE-ORDER:
orcd.co/absentinbody
ABSENT IN BODY make their Relapse Records debut with the terrifying new album Plague God, out March 25, 2022 on LP/CD/CS/Digital. Watch “The Acres/The Ache” music video and pre-order AT THIS LOCATION: https://orcd.co/absentinbody
Initially the brainchild of AMENRA guitarist Mathieu J. Vandekerckhove, and NEUROSIS vocalist/guitarist Scott Kelly, ABSENT IN BODY formed in 2017. Immediately recognizing their kinship, and with AMENRA frontman Colin H. Van Eeckhout brought in on vocals and bass, what emerged is a reflection of the intervening years of turbulence, extending it’s scope as it navigates across five stretches of unstable terrain. From the opening Rise From Ruins with Sepultura drummer, Iggor Cavelera’s tribal beat emerging from foreboding, near-subsonic oscillations to explode in a tide of corrosive riffs and feral howls, through Sarin’s steadfast, procession-through-purgatory groove, to The Half Rising Man’s matrix of organic/mechanic evolution, it’s an album in constant dialogue between the animalistic, the human and the industrial, and a hunger to distill a truth, something unpolluted from the fray.
Plague God doesn’t just give voice to these moments of truth, but in the band’s deep kinship integral to every claustrophobic judder, every stretch of atmospheric dread and helpless alias assumed, lies a freedom we both forget and attain at our peril.
Mathieu Vandekerckhove comments:
“We had not imposed any limitations or boundaries on ourselves to create this music. Everything happened without any compromise, we gathered and let inspiration run freely. It is the beauty and the strength of this album.”
Iggor Cavalera comments:
“It feels great to collaborate with such forward-thinking minds like Colin, Mathieu, and Scott on AIB. The music is dense and slowly brutal, very similar to the times we are living.”
Direct Plague God physical pre-order via Relapse.com is available HERE: https://store.relapse.com/absent-in-body-plague-god
“The Acres/The Ache” music video was filmed and edited by Mathieu Vandekerckhove.
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