Xiphoid Dementia - Secular Hymns CD now available

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SOUND SAMPLES AVAILABLE ON SOUNDCLOUD

The newest full-length from Xiphoid Dementia is now available on Malignant Records! Copies will be available on the Funerary Call/Xiphoid Dementia 2012 East Coast Tour and in the Existence Establishment Shop after the tour as some special sale bundles are planned along with new Xiphoid Dementia tshirts celebrating the album.

Here's the writeup from Malgnant: Actively recording since 1999, Egan Budd's Xiphoid Dementia has become known in the underground and in numerous live situations for creating meticulously crafted yet hard to define, post industrial soundscapes, navigating between textured ambience, scourging noise, junk metal, field recordings, and surreal atmospheres, sometimes all in one track. Still, there's a hyper-focus here that ties it altogether, and makes for something that is dynamic, unpredictable, and clearly ambitious. For those that question if there's originality left in industrial music, Xiphoid Dementia answers with a resounding yes, though not so much in the sounds themselves, but rather how they are layered and placed.

The first track, Abortion Rites, manages to capture the essence of Xiphoid right off the bat; starting calm enough with a singular drone and a rising apocalyptic choir, only to be eventually engulfed in a firestorm of brain rattling noise and straining machine vibrations, before shifting gears into sprawling cosmic drones, deep bass drops, and processed vocal squall. Subsequent tracks follow a similar path, constantly moving from the cerebral to the physical, adding structural elements, then obliterating it in a mass of debris, mechanized whir, and sharp edged clutter. Of the four tracks here, the last track is perhaps the most focused, and certainly the bleakest; a 13 + minute excursion into a dystopian society full of utterly hopeless and dark, resonating atmospherics, and ending in a cyclonic blur of destructive noise and blackened filth. It's perfectly executed and a suitable ending to what equates to an intensely visceral and creative listen. Hard to find comparisons here, but those that appreciate the dynamics of Navicon Torture Technologies, Prurient, and Propergol will certainly find something to like. In 6 panel digipak.

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First review from Noise Receptor:

Xiphoid Dementia have been around for quite a few years it seems (...since 1999 accordingly to the promo blurb), yet this is my first introduction to the solo project of Egan Budd.  'Secular Hymns' is evidently his second official album, yet based on the myriad of tonal aspects covered herein I am finding it rather difficult to pin down some words to describe it.  This comment however is not intended as a negative, as by ignoring genre 'rules' Xiphoid Dementia have effectively turned any pre-conceived expectations I might have had on their head and produced a complex and striking album in the process.  Likewise with the varied and multi-faceted sound of each composition which runs the gamut of multiple genres, it is akin to having multiple tracks within the lager compositional structure.  On the other hand to provide an overly clinical description, 'Secular Hymns' blends aspects of noise, industrial, dark ambient and power electronics across four tracks of extended length (10-14 minutes each).

Although the album commences calmly, the droning melodies and choir vocals of 'Abortion Rites', are soon enveloped by harsh, blasting, freeform noise (...let's call this a positive pairing of dark ambient and industrial noise).  Yet the opening track does not remain solely in a noise guise, instead edges into a loose power electronics arrangement complete with heavily treated vocals.  Within its roughly hewn industrial soundscape the second composition 'My Time Will Never Come' presents a vague tribal / experimental character, which mid track falls away into a section of meditative synth melodies and further punctuated by metallic echoes and the tolling of a lone church bell.  In a further display of the album's bipolar tendencies, 'What We Believe' heads off on a totally different tangent, starting as a loosely structured experimental / ambient track, gradually building into a harder edged industrial noise and pulsing power electronics piece.  Likewise based on its harsh overloaded bass/ noise production and further use of sampled dialogue, this track is not too far from the lauded sound of Propergol.  For the final of the four tracks 'Breathe' commences as a slab of droning, viscous dark ambience that gradually morphs towards death industrial aura through the introduction of sporadic jagged tonal aspects catatonic bass heavy beat and distortion scarred vocals, making this track a focused and passionate ending to a solid album.

With the variation in sound and strong disregard for established genre boundaries, this attitude (along with a few of the calmer dark ambient moments), brings to mind the early works of BJ Nielsen (aka the final Morthound album 'The Goddess Who Could Make The Ugly World Beautiful', and to a lesser degree the first Hazard album 'Lech'), which is high praise from my perspective.  Likewise with its varied and complex scope and the finesse and confidence in which the material is delivered, Xiphoid Dementia is yet another excellent addition to the Malignant Records roster.

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Another review from Forbidden Magazine!

"Breathe" equates to dark ambient layers of astral drone with indecipherable sounds of  live horror and suffering, with possibly even rants of insanity slightly below the surface. When I say "drone" I don't mean boring and monotonous, it's more like classic Lustmord nightmarish electronic drifts of soothing and yet unnerving pieces of Hell being gradually implanted into my subconscious while I'm in a half anesthetized state of mind. The world is blurry to all five of my senses but I can still make out the piercing hints of noise, like a saw carving methodically through metal dissolved into thick drawn out moments of my chloroform haze. Eventually shuffling huffs and wafts of almost human sound, including grunts and maniacal sadistic monologue with the occasional thump of something heavy dropping come to the forefront and out shriek the drone with a burst of gritty power electronic real-time manipulating that borders on experiencing electrocution while hallucinating and numbed on opiates. This is an ideal night listening while reading true crime and criminal psychology books as it does nicely convey a sense of horror of drugged torture and weird psychological suspense , but wrapped up softly in warm frequencies to soften to blow (so to speak). The title is therefore cleverly ironic, as this is more like suffocation than freely breathing.

"Abortion Rites" combines distorted bass blurbs, junk metal clanking, and shrill noise tantrums over a really nice neo-classical synthesizer foundation. It's sort of like something serene and beautiful being set on fire, pissed on, shit on, and absolutely destroyed only adapted to a listening format versus a visual one. I also can't help but completely love the weird sense of something repeatedly falling: "Pheeeeeeewwwwwwmmmmmmm" , but never dropping, amidst very fuzzy distorted blurbs of human voice saturated in echo and delay, and then it DOES drop with a massive bass thud that strains the speakers. There's no way...NO WAY...this guy has this stuff rehearsed!!! It's so fluid and real and yet still jagged enough to be unsettling to some listeners.

"What You Believe" is my favorite of the four tracks for the sheer fact that it starts out sounding like a steam engine train coming into a tunnel puffing rumbling bass tones and a distinctly repetitive pattern of rhythm inducing hypnosis so that you barely realized death occurred seconds before. Lots of scrap metal being tossed around and explosions in the background appear as the train has crashed and the tragic reality has slowly sunk in with a whir of chopping rhythms from a helicopter hovering over the wreckage. Next sporadic gun fire and phaser beam blasts make the scene, eventually evolving into a new power electronic opus that does honestly resemble moments of Death Factory, Machinen Unter Kontrolle, complete with a continual looping of an alarm like sound and a bunch of apocalyptic war audio streamed and warped beneath it. BUT the best moments come toward the last 4 minutes when the weird loony is yelling and ranting to his doctor about his continually deteriorating mental health state as the looping alarm and explosions continually drown out his raving. That last four minutes is the only reason that "What You Believe" stands out amongst the three other incredible sonic brain twisters, and even then it's a tough call to make because they are all brilliant.

Much like Death Factory and Nyodene D, Xiphoid Dementia completely flushes the boundaries between power electronic, noise, purely experimental, and dark ambient. Sometime there're lush fuzzed out walls of sonic noise such as with The Rita, others a bit of shrieking feedback that is unsettling to the nervous system (think Hal Hutchinson/Richard Ramirez), some glacial astral drone with a sense of psychosis right beneath the haze (Cloama), a bit of industrialized neo-classical hinting at some In Slaughter Natives, and you hopefully get an idea of the scope covered.

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Another review from Side-Line.

Egan Budd has already been active for a couple of years under the Xiphoid Dementia moniker. The project has joined the renowned dark-ambient Malignant Records to launch the newest album.

"Secular Hymns" took me by surprise and I can really speak about a revelation. Moving somewhere in between dark-ambient and industrial-noise "Secular Hymns" is an opus that catches the attention for its impressive arsenal of sounds and noises that have been used. But the main characteristic of the release concerns the global production. The way all the sounds have been mixed and empowered by stereo effects simply is unique. Xiphoid Dementia is a high-tech production where every single sound has its importance and its place. The different noises, field recordings, drones and other electronic manipulations are creating a compact and overwhelming production.

"Secular Hymns" features 4 tracks and presents a great progression in sound. Each song is hiding some new tracks and secrets. Dark crescendo vibes are joined by noise manipulations until a kind of imaginary sound monster awakens on "Abortion Rites". This is a kind of sonic allegory, which will touch your darkest thoughts and deepest visions of horror. This imaginary monster sounds like vomiting tortured noises.

"My Time Will Never Come" sounds quite desperate while musical-wise you rapidly feel like entering an apocalyptic voyage without an exit. Hard drones and poignant tic-tac sounds have been empowered by metallic percussions while a church bell starts resonating. It all sounds like a nearby disaster appealing believers for a final mess. Right at the point where you get the impression that mankind will be destroyed, a kind of electronic organ starts playing in a sort of nihilistic concerto.

"Secular Hymns" is a poignant composition that comes to a climax on "What You Believe". The tormented spheres and heavy noise manipulations have been reinforced by analogue sound waves and outstanding stereo effects. This is the kind of track where you feel like watching a movie by the simple strength of the music awakening your imagination. The edge between ambient and noise is quite close, but in the end I prefer to speak about apocalyptic ambient music.

"Breathe" is the last chapter of this surreal sound dimension created by Xiphoid Dementia. This track is more soundscape-minded, but still moves into noise fields and heavy drones. There are not many projects in the genre revealing such a high level of creativity in sound and noises.

This is one more essential release featured on the Malignant Records roster and one more project you have to discover. Terror has never been so delightful!