The first track on the album we’re about to premiere is entitled “Manifest“. In it, a woman delivers a depressing introductory statement, but one that’s difficult to deny. She observes that wars have raged throughout human history, spilling blood in vast rivers, followed by waves of despair and hate, but that somehow history always seems to leave us blind and ignorant. We are preceded by columns of shattered souls, and countless generations of shattered souls will follow us. And so, she says, “every generation will be blinded by mnemocide….”

As to the meaning of “mnemocide”, it seems to refer to the willful erasure of memory. It brings to mind a line in Greoge Orwell’s 1984: “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

That first spoken-word track on the debut album by this Swiss death metal band, who have themselves taken the name Mnemocide, could be understood as a manifesto for the album as a whole, both lyrically and in the dystopian and dismal atmosphere that the music itself generates while, at the same time, the humongous pounding grooves of the songs are ruining our necks. Continue reading »