AN NCS PREMIERE: EMBRACE YOUR PUNISHMENT — “OPPRESSION”

Oct 202023

Hailing from Valenciennes, France, Embrace Your Punishment have been smashing bones and ruining minds since 2009, compiling a discography that includes a debut EP and two albums (2014’s Honor Before Glory and 2019’s Nameless King). Along the way they’ve wrecked lots of venues from the stage too. And now they’ve got a third album teed up for release by Lacerated Enemy Records on December 1st.

The name of the new album is Made of Stone, and that name is a good preview of the music, which is massive, mauling, and made to crush skulls and spines with no mercy and no remorse. You really might as well embrace your punishment, because this record leaves you no choice.

You want proof? Listen to the song we’re premiering today, the well-named “Oppression“.

There’s nothing subtle about this track, but it changes so fast and so often that it will keep listeners on their toes even as it’s pile-driving them into the ground.

With barely any warning (just a quickly writhing and quickly mutilating guitar arpeggio), the band launch a stunning sonic bombardment, an assault of hammering drums, massive clanging bass notes, wild roars and howls that are as raw as roadburn, and frenzied fretwork convulsions.

The music truly is a beating of massive proportions, seemingly heavy and hard enough to split open concrete as if it were an eggshell, and when the band deliver a breakdown the brute-force punishment reaches an even more ruinous scale (even though the drums and the vocals continue sounding maniacal).

After that humongous beatdown, the percussive bullets start firing again at an overheating rate of speed and the riffs roil and writhe once more. But as is true throughout the song, the changes of tempo and pattern keep coming, alternately accelerating, stomping, and slogging without warning, straight through to the bitter, crushing end.

EMBRACE YOUR PUNISHMENT is:
Geoffroy Mansard : Guitar
Clément Dellis : Bass
Clément Rue : Drums
Vivien Rue : Vocals

In addition to the work of those four marauders, Made of Stone also features some notable guest appearances: Jason Netherton from Misery Index, Kirk Windstein from Crowbar, and Julien Truchan from Benighted.

In fact, the album’s first single, “Unconquered“, is the one where Jason Netherton makes his presence vividly known, and you’ll find a stream of it below the following links. Speaking of which, you can pre-order the album now!