On May 10th the Cleveland-based extreme metal band Paradox Rift will release a debut album named Ensnared. It features harrowing cover art by Remy Cooper (Headsplit Design), which captures key elements of the album’s themes. In the band’s words it depicts: “A figure or entity stuck/being torn between two dimensions; A demolecularizing body that has no complete form in one realm or the other. Existing in agony, never to be whole. Constantly being ripped apart and reanimated, Ensnared between two worlds.”
The band’s music pulls from different worlds too — different sub-genres of metal reflected in the influence of such bands as Between the Buried and Me, Gojira, Lamb of God, and Converge (among others). To share again the band’s own explanation:
Paradox Rift is a blend of multiple generations of metal coming together. With members in their early thirties, late thirties and even a fifty year old. We all listen to different generations, styles and subgenres of metal and we all bring something different to the Paradox Rift table.
What we have for you today is the premiere of a lyric video made by Scott Rudd Films and featuring artwork by Mark Erskine for a song from Ensnared named “The Sky Beneath“, and once more we’ll start with the band’s description of what the song is about:
“The Sky Beneath” is a fabricated story about a sadistic manipulator getting caught in the web of his own lies. Though he can sometimes exert his control over some people, he will learn that not everyone will put up with his slanderous actions. Eventually he will lose his life for trying his games on the wrong person.
In a nutshell, “The Sky Beneath” is both viscerally “muscular” and disturbingly demented, both head-spinning and eerie. As the band themselves say, “There are peaks and valleys in the instrumentation that convey anger, betrayal and regret….” But to crack open the nut:
The song’s narrator is clearly, furiously, insane. That would be evident even if you couldn’t see the words or hear them, though they’re impressively intelligible given the completely unhinged nature of the ravenous roars, wild yells, and throat-lacerating screams, which become increasingly intense and stripped of sanity as the song proceeds.
The vocals do seize attention, but everything else does too, from the gunshot snare cracks and double-kick thunder, to the plundering pulse of the song’s recurrent lead-weighted grooves and the freakishness of the swirling and screaming guitar-leads. The song delivers a savage gut-punch, over and over again, but also features off-kilter rhythmic patterns and eerie chords of despair that blare and shiver in the upper reaches of the range.
PARADOX RIFT is:
Luke Weeks – Vocals
Eric Burrington – Drums
Preston Lund – Guitar
Aljosa Covic – Bass
Ensnared is available for pre-order now. It was produced by Paradox Rift and Mercenary Studios. It was mixed and mastered by Noah C. Buchanan.
Below, we’re also including the previously released video for the album track “Grave-Snuggler” and a stream of the album’s opening song, “Dismembered By Dogs“.
PRE-ORDER / PRE-SAVE:
https://paradoxrift.bandcamp.com/album/ensnared
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/paradoxrift/ensnared
PARADOX RIFT – MORE INFO:
https://www.paradoxriftofficial.com/
https://www.instagram.com/paradoxriftofficial/
https://www.facebook.com/ParadoxRiftOfficial/