It’s difficult to know whether to take this seriously: Northern California’s Embryonic Devourment dedicates their new album, Vivid Interpretations of the Void, “to the people helping to expose the reptilian agenda,” specifically including David Ickes, Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa, conspiracy theorists Phil Schneider and Alex Jones, and “The Sumerians”.
If you don’t know, David Ickes is a British writer, speaker, and former media personality whose writings argue that shape-shifting alien reptoids have been controlling the course of human events for thousands of years and have inserted their own genetically compatible humanoid slaves into positions of power.
Embryonic Devourment’s fixation with the reptilian threat goes well beyond the album dedication. Lyrically, the songs are all about that, too — that and nothing else: Shape shifters “killing people fast”, the controlling dominance of “eternal ancient gargoyles,” the “messages lying beneath older worldly tablets,” the intertwining “of repto ancestry through history,” “lizard eyes pierc[ing] your mind hypnotized,” and more. The album as a whole stands as a warning to the merely human: “Beware thy master god of disaster.”
Stranger things than this have inspired musicians, though this is certainly strange enough. But hey, we’re keeping open minds about the reptilian agenda. We run across people almost every day who act like reptoids. Who knows? Maybe they really are.
Plus, we’re keeping open minds as a show of respect for the music — which is an inventive and strangely pleasing amalgamation of cathartically extreme styles. (more after the jump, including an ear-grabbing song . . .)
Embryonic Devourment is an impressively nimble-fingered, fleet-of-foot collective of musicians who seem to delight in creative displays of their physical dexterity. They call to mind a jam session of Cannibal Corpse and Cephalic Carnage, producing technical death metal, usually at high speed, with screeching, screaming, squealing, leaping guitars, barely contained eruptions of drumming, and prominent bass arpeggios.
Oh, but that’s not all. Let’s not forget the guitar solos — the crazy jazz-like riffing on “Militarized Reptoids”, “Eye of the Horomatangi”, and elsewhere, or the mid-paced, soulful solo within “We Are Chitauri”. “Cleansing the Infinite” also deserves special mention — it embodies the same shotgun marriage of technical death metal and jazz stylings with some extremely cool bass plucking and lead guitar insanity. It’s an all-out display of technical virtuosity.
And then there’s the last two minutes of “Perceiving the Multidimensiona,” which is a jazzy jam of instrumental metal that starts from a dead stop after the blowtorch beginning of the song has spent itself.
This supercharged machine lurches and veers like an off-course hydroplane that has penetrated an interdimensional membrane. The guitars scream and moan and pelt like a hailstorm on a metal roof. The bass thunders and rips and grinds and swirls like a lead guitar. The drums clatter and rapid-fire on full auto and detonate like an avalanche of grenades. The gravelly vocals bark and gurgle and vehemently proclaim the threat of the reptilian sun god.
If this were simply a groove-less display of technical virtuosity, that would be fine with us, because the playing is so imaginative. But, lo and behold, the god of groove has infected this music, and even the sister goddesses of soulful melody and prog-metal inventiveness make big appearances, respectively, on “We Are Chitauri” and “Perceiving the Multidimensiona”.
We have a feeling Embryonic Devourment are dead serious about the reptilian threat. Even so, even so, the music is just fucking hot shit and should be heard, by many people. But mainly by people who are not reptilian slaves. Here’s an example:
Vivid Interpretations of the Void was recently released on DeepsEnd Records and can be acquired as a CD at this location.
14 Responses to “EMBRYONIC DEVOURMENT”
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I still don’t know what to really think of these guys – that hasn’t changed since the last time you wrote about Embryonic Devourment. Some decent stuff in “We Are Chitauri”, but I’m not feeling it. Maybe I need to embrace the inner reptile or something.
And is it just me, or does that live shot of the bassist make him look like a Klingon?
That lizard mask does sort of make him look like a Klingon. He’s been drinking too much virgin’s blood.
Oh, that makes sense.
Wait… what? They wear lizard masks on stage?
I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing them live. In most of the live performance photos at their MySpace location, they’re not wearing masks, but in a few, they are. Of course, i chose one of those.
Who am I to criticize a band for wearing lizard masks? I listen to folk metal too. They aren’t exactly the pinnacle of fashion in metal. And don’t forget, there are cavemen on stage too. Or aliens who will happily douse the audience in various bodily fluids. Of some of the stuff certain black metal bands drag on stage to enhance the performance.
Fucking cube.
And speaking of the fucking cube, today is the official release date of that new Goat the Head album, “Doppelganger”. My mood? Stoked!
Oh, as for the virgin-blood reference, it appears that according to Ickes’ theory, the reptoids produced half-blood offspring by interbreeding with human females. The product of that interbreeding program now control the world and can shape-shift into human form by drinking human blood.
I love these guys. They had a video up on their myspace page of two or three of the band members vacationing in Egypt. Seemed like pretty normal fellows to me. Just goes to show you never know what is lurking behind they eyes.
They may be crazy as shithouse rats, but they put out some tasty fucking metal. This would be excellent music to watch Conan the Barbarian too. Snake deities all around!
Oh I forgot to mention that this album is on my must have list right now, which currnetly has about 12 artists. I am getting behind. I need more money. We need a cash grab. I think we should play the Powerball lottery as a group and split the winnings amongst the NCS family. Then we can all have the all metal we want.
More money for more metal would definitely be nice, but you may be barking up the wrong tree here. I have never won anything in any kind of sweepstakes, lottery, or any other random-chance, roll-the-dice, kind of play. Maybe the other members of our family would have better luck. I have a feeling i would just jinx the whole enterprise.
Hey, I am right there with ya. I have never won anything, ever. It kinda sucks, but, there is always a first time for everything. Maybe getting a bunch of hard luck losers together will produce magical results.
Well, you may be right. I’ll give some thought to how we might put something like that together.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s now time for the next installment of METAL LOTTERY!”