It’s always a pleasure to come across a song name that sends us running for the dictionary, even when it’s a name whose meaning we might be able to guess after dividing it into its component parts. If you guessed that “Zoophagist” refers to an animal that eats every other animal available to it, you get a gold star.
However, in the case of the song you’re about to experience courtesy of the Chicago band Wounds, that creature isn’t one you can find in any zoo or earthly wilderness. As the song’s chilling lyrics describe, it is instead a collective of lethal things that have captivated the mind of their captor in a lab in outer space and thereby achieved their escape.
In the words of the song, these things eagerly anticipate what will come next after they make their way to our solar system:
We are released and awake ready to consume
And bring the humans to their doom
Each cell we devour
Adds to our ecstasy
Becoming a new God
Vast power brought to bear
We will devour the earth and everything under its sun…
And thus the song connects not only to its own name but also to the name of the album that includes it: Ruin.
In the music of “Zoophagist” it sounds like our alien conquerors have already arrived and embarked upon their merciless consumption.
The song is indeed indisputably alien and cruel, coldly calculating but also ravenous. The riffing repeatedly starts and stops, shifting as it does, discharging abrasively blaring bursts and insectile frenzies, backed by drumming that if anything is even more unpredictably off-kilter and bass-lines that growl and moan as well as slug.
And speaking of ravenous, the vocals are authentically that, though they also come in bursts of barking and screaming savagery.
Trying to hide from these alien marauders is pointless, because the music also sounds like they’re capable of bludgeoning concrete shelters into rubble and meticulously picking through the remnants to find the flesh they desire.
And so we present a song that’s both a mind-scrambler and a pile-driver, one that includes wrecking grooves as well as bizarre instrumental contortions and asylum-quality vocals.
“Zoophagist” is the second single from Ruin in advance of the record’s release on March 15th by Everlasting Spew Records. The first one was “Birth Of A New Light“.
If anything, it’s even more freaked-out than the track we’ve just premiered, even more technically impressive and even more twisted in its many insanely intricate maneuvers. And it too seems just as determined to leave skulls busted and spines splintered.
Ruin is Wound‘s debut album, and it follows their 2019 debut EP Light Eater. The lineup is:
Norman Hale – Vocals
Nate Burgard – Drums
Franco Caballero – Bass
Rick Mora – Guitar
Ruin was tracked and mixed by Paul Aluculesei, and it was mastered by Wounds (vinyl mastering by Carlo Altobelli). The cover art was created by Stigma (Samuel Nelson).
Everlasting Spew will release the album on CD, cassette tape, and digital formats, with a vinyl edition expected by late spring 2024. It’s wisely recommended for fans of Psycroptic, late Deeds Of Flesh, Revocation, and Spawn Of Possession.
PRE-ORDER:
PHYSICAL: https://bit.ly/48tA7Qa
DIGITAL: https://bit.ly/3vxuySc