AUTHOR & PUNISHER: “KRÜLLER”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 112022
 

 

(This is Wil Cifer‘s review of the new album by California-based Author & Punisher, which is being released by Relapse Records today.)

It would have been easy for Tristan Shone to have just coasted for the rest of his career by being known as the dude who makes music with these machines he built. His early work consisted of very aggressive and dense slabs of industrial steamrolling that droned you into submission.

It was a very powerful-sounding juggernaut. Just creating a sound was something he was content with, and by Women and Children” he added more atmosphere and melody, writing songs that stuck with you and placed him alongside any of his peers. This earned him a spot on my list of most anticipated albums of this year. He has exceeded my expectations with his newest release. It is not likely this album is going to convert you into a fan of industrial music, but will at the least endow fans of heaviness with respect for what is being done here. Continue reading »

AUTHOR & PUNISHER: “BEASTLAND”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 012018
 

 

(This is Wil Cifer’s review of the new sixth album by Author & Punisher, which will be released by Relapse Records on October 5th.)

Not being satisfied with heavy as merely blazing fast double-bass with even faster guitar solos, I require something out of left field with a great deal of sonic intensity. Author & Punisher’s brand of sludged-out industrial fits the bill.

At first listen, what Tristan Shone does might seem like a novel concept…”Oh yeah, he’s the dude that plays with machines”. Six albums in, that novelty has to be taken out of the equation to leave the focus on the songs. He delivers in this regard, while working against the abrasive drone that tends to dominate his sound. Continue reading »

AUTHOR & PUNISHER: “PRESSURE MINE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 062017
 

 

(DGR reviews the new EP by Author & Punisher.)

Half the fun of reviewing the handful of Author & Punisher releases that I’ve been able to cover the years has been in finding descriptors for the music. It is a project that lends itself to creative prose, in part because the Author & Punisher project doesn’t use traditional instrumentation; the artist himself constructs the instruments and plays them solely by himself, so the usual go-to’s are immediately flung into traffic to become someone’s new hood ornament. Describing the slow, percussive, atmospheric, drone and doom that Author & Punisher has made its bread and butter has been fun, but two of the words that never would’ve come to mind are “detached” and “dispassionate”.

Author & Punisher albums have differed immensely from each other over the years, with a collective of various influences each worming their way into the recordings of project mainman Tristan Shone drowning within his machinery that we’ve taken to calling music. Up until Author & Punisher’s previous release Melk En Honing, the music felt partially like an exorcism, a form of expression for someone who was burying himself in layers of percussive machinery, occasionally screaming at the top of his lungs and engaging in the occasional minor Godflesh worship. Women & Children, especially, had a lot of fun with being as fierce as the song within it that bore the same name, albeit at a very slow pace. Melk En Honing had some roots in a blues-and-sludge twist on the regular formula, and also included some of the heaviest moments that Author & Punisher has created to date — including the blinding violence of the opening few minutes of “Callous And Hoof”.

A new Author & Punisher release is kind of an event because it often comes coupled with new machinery that Tristan has built, and the newest Author & Punisher release Pressure Mine is no different in that aspect, but it is a very, very different event than previous experiences. Continue reading »

AUTHOR & PUNISHER: “MELK EN HONING”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Jul 022015
 

 

(DGR reviews the new album by Author & Punisher.)

If you’ve been reading the site for a bit you’ll have noted the name Author & Punisher coming up from time to time, usually by way of my loud mouth. I’m a relatively recent convert to the Author & Punisher school, yet in that time the releases out of this project have quickly rocketed up the charts into ones that I look forward to the most — in large part buoyed by the fact that I find this project absolutely fascinating.

It’s been great seeing the Author & Punisher profile increase over the years, even in the limited time I’ve been following it since my review of Women And Children (having heard stuff before, but never fully exploring until that disc). More people seem to be discovering this odd bit of machination turned into music — but lo and behold, who would’ve predicted that the next Author & Punisher album was going to be produced by Phil Anselmo of Pantera, Down, and Superjoint Ritual fame?

For those who are still wondering what it is the hell I am rambling about, Author & Punisher is a San Diego-based musical project belonging to artist and engineer Tristan Shone. Over the past few years, he’s been making a sort of slow-moving, suffocating, industrial, and heavy form of doom that is already pretty left-field to begin with, likely to be much discussed in dark, smoky rooms by people who probably finish half their sentences with, “You might not have heard them”. Continue reading »

SIFTING: DISARMONIA MUNDI, MAJALIS, AUTHOR & PUNISHER, SIBERIAN HELL SOUNDS / TRAVELS SPLIT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
May 272015
 

 

(DGR wrote this round-up of new music while I was away at MDF, and I rewarded his helpfulness by posting it days later after I got back home. You’re welcome, Dave.)

While most of the goofballs who inhabit this site are off fucking around somewhere in Maryland, one of us has to pick up the slack and bring you yesterday’s news tomorrow, otherwise we wouldn’t be fulfilling our mission statement of always being just behind the curve — but with more words to make up for the delay.

This edition is going to be a little heavily biased toward my tastes, which means we’re probably going to be on the lighter fare of the metal scale, but there was still some damn good music to happen within recent weeks, and most of the bands you folks will be familiar with. There were a couple of interesting discoveries on that front, as a couple of different artists decided to release new songs out to the world, and then in the other two cases, they’ve been out for a bit but we’re doing our best to keep them from flying under the radar. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2013’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 20

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2013  16 Responses »
Feb 052014
 

Welcome to Part 20 of our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the songs I’m announcing today, click here.

In an effort to complete this list in your lifetime, I’ve decided to start tripling up, but hopefully not tripping up. From now until I finish, there will be three songs in each installment. As usual, I’m trying to group the songs together in ways that make some kind of sense. Perhaps you’ll decide that today’s songs are collected together because they really don’t fit anywhere else. I think they actually make a pretty cool little 3-part playlist.

AUTHOR & PUNISHER

For those not in the know, Author & Punisher is the part-band-part-art-project of Tristan Shone, who uses his skills as a mechanical engineer to create unique electronic instruments, out of which he wrings emotionally suffocating industrial doom, with heavy elements of dub and drone music. We have written about A&P frequently, and DGR reviewed the 2013 album, Women & Children here.  Continue reading »

A LIFE ONCE LOST, AUTHOR AND PUNISHER, ENCRUST: LIVE IN TOLEDO, MICKEY FINN’S, MARCH 21, 2013

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 162013
 

(In this post NCS writer BadWolf reviews a live show by A Life Once Lost, Author and Punisher, and Encrust last month, and Nicholas Vechery provides some killer pics.)

 

I was walking through JC Penny with a friend the other day—he had a gift certificate and wanted to spend it, which proved harder than we anticipated. Because fuck JC Penny. He decided to look through clearance dress shoes. He tried a pair on, put it back and said:

‘It fits alright but I don’t like that metal band on the top.’

To which I said.

‘I don’t think I’ve heard anyone use those two words literally like that in years.’

It’s easy to take the origin of metal, as a genre-describing-word, out of context. It’s become self-referential. Suppose your friend took a spill while skateboarding and cut his forehead open—you might see the blood streaming over his eye and say ‘that’s so metal,’ like the genre’s content. But really that’s not metal at all. Metal cannot bleed.

Metal is machine-music. It’s hard as industry. I cannot conceive of an acoustic metal band—unlike rock and roll, we need electricity and amplification to make metal. Though not necessarily guitars, but I’ll get back to that in a moment.

The Man Machine Tour, featuring A Life Once Lost, Author and Punisher, and Encrust, was an inspired lineup: not only did each band have its own distinct flavor, but each, in its own way, embodied those mechanical, industrial aspects of the genre. Continue reading »

AUTHOR AND PUNISHER: “TERRORBIRD” (THE VIDEO)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Aug 222012
 

In March of this year, BadWolf introduced us to Author and Punisher via this post about the artist and his new album Ursus Americanus, which was released in April by Seventh Rule Records (and is available for streaming and purchase here). For those who missed that, Author and Punisher is the industrial solo project of one Tristan Shone, who has become something of a geek hero by creating his own bizarre machine instruments.

To quote BadWolf: “Author and Punisher pulls influences from the more drone/groove oriented Industrial of Godflesh, as opposed to the thrashier (and poppier) Ministry school. . . . The songs on Ursus Americanus roll over the listener with heft and weight sorely lacking in most modern Industrial music. . . . I wager Tristan Shone could make a decent living off science fiction and horror film composing if he weren’t an employee at the National Center for Microscopy. . . . During my second run-through, I closed my eyes and imagined technological carnage unfolding against the movie screen that is the inside of my eyelids.”

Well, BadWolf doesn’t have to rely solely on his imagination any more. Thanks to the awesome DECIBLOG, I discovered this morning that Author and Punishment has released a new music video for a song from the latest album called “Terrorbirds”. BadWolf streamed a live version of the song with his March review, but this new video provides a horror story to go with the music. It was directed by Augustine Arredondo and stars Rob Crow (Pinback, Goblin Cock), and it’s delicious. Now we know what a Terrorbird is.

Watch it after the jump. Continue reading »

AUTHOR AND PUNISHER

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Mar 122012
 

(BadWolf introduces us to Author and Punisher. Unlike most metal musicians, he engineers and builds his own instrumental devices. Prepare for massive nerdgasm.)

How would you like to be crushed by an army of giant robots? I’m afraid technology isn’t quite there yet, but the closest you could come is to jam on Author and Punisher.

Author and Punisher is the Industrial solo project of one Tristan Shone, and what an apt title it is. This is music that definitely follows a single creative vision (Author) and punishment is what he doles out. Shone’s new album, Ursus Americanus, will be released on April 24th through Seventh Rule records, the home of such sludgy marauders as: Indian, Harpoon, Lord Mantis, and the mighty Batillus.

Author and Punisher pulls influences from the more drone/groove oriented Industrial of Godflesh, as opposed to the thrashier (and poppier) Ministry school. Paradoxically, I find Author and Punisher heavier than those bands, but Tristan Shone does not use a guitar—and that’s precisely what is so metal about him.

He creates his own unique instruments—that resemble a Gundam cockpit. Check it out. Continue reading »