AN NCS PREMIERE: SWINE OVERLORD — “A DELUSION’S PARADISE”

 

Once upon a time we had a semi-regular feature at this site called “Eye Catchers” in which we chose new music to explore based solely on the album art, testing the hypothesis that cool artwork usually means cool music. This new album, Entheogenesis, by the beautifully named Swine Overlord would have easily qualified for that series. Seriously, gaze for a moment more at the cover art by Chinese artist Yang Guang (Equilibrium, Putridity, Inanimate Existence), who we’ve featured repeatedly in the daily art posts on our Facebook page.

Having been drawn to this album by the artwork and the band’s name, I began to explore the music… and it definitely tends to support the hypothesis of “Eye Catchers”. But judge for yourselves, because we have a sample of Entheogenesis to share with you — the 9th of fourteen tracks on the album: “A Delusion’s Paradise“.

 

 

By way of background, Swine Overlord are a duo now composed of multi-instrumentalist and founding member Will Peplinski and vocalist Anthony Viscusi. The band’s debut album Parables of Umbral Transcendence was released in 2014.

The new full-length includes guest appearances by Tim Bee (Paroxysmal Butchering) and Jord James (Disentomb). It’s a concept album that offers “a unique look at the development of the human psyche through the lens of western religion and eastern spirituality.” The concept is reflected in that cover art, which (in Will Peplinski’s words) “combines deities from various religions into a massive horror, with one lone adventurer heading into the darkness within, as we all must do.”

 

As for the song we’re premiering, Peplinski explains: “‘A Delusion’s Paradise’ is one of the first handful of songs I wrote for the album. It’s arguably the climax of our story, and contains some of my favorite moments musically, so I figured it’d be a great last single”.

The song is a mixture of brutal punishment and eerie, brain-twisting melodic accents. The near-atonal, pile-driving riffs, skittering leads, and mauling, rapid-fire drumwork do the heavy work of splintering skulls and punching massive holes into torsos, as the vocalist delivers a lyrical tirade in ugly gutturals and hair-raising shrieks. However, this vicious trauma is only part of what happens in the song.

You get hints of the music’s other ingredients early on, but it’s not until the mid-point that the music really changes course (and it happens more than once before the song’s end)… but I think I’ll just leave those surprises for you to discover for yourselves.

 

Entheogenesis is set for release September 23, 2016 via Gore House Productions on CD and digital. One other single, “Procreating the Offspring of Gods and Men”, can be heard here. To pre-order the album, visit this location:

http://tinyurl.com/SwineOverlord

A complete track list follows the stream of our premiere below.

https://www.facebook.com/SwineOverlord
https://swineoverlord.bandcamp.com/

 

 

ENTHEOGENESIS Track List:

1. I: The Creator
2. Severed from the Godhead
3. Graceless
4. Procreating the Offspring of Gods and Men
5. II: The Preserver
6. (I)conoclasm
7. Invoking an Obsidian Liturgy
8. Riverchrist
9. A Delusion’s Paradise
10. III: The Destroyer
11. Altars of a Putrid Resurrection
12. Voidweaver
13. Whispers of the Ineffable
14. Gazing into the Shadow’s Maw