Venom Prison are back — although considering the brute force of their music, it would be hard to say they ever left. On February 15, they dropped the first single in support of their upcoming new album Samsara, which releases March 15 on Prosthetic Records. The release follows a few years after their debut full length, 2016’s Animus, which helped rocket them to prominence, at least within the extreme metal community.
Samsara‘s first single is called “Uterine Industrialization” and sees the band diving ever deeper into their violent elucidation of a brutal, animalistic anger. In their latest track, their mind-bending metallic fury serves two purposes — responding to the chaos inflicted on women by the strangling societal expectations around them, and honestly depicting that chaos in the first place. The song tells a graphic story of women being dehumanized and turned into little more than breeding machines — and if you think that’s only found in fiction, or even in music that’s extreme to begin with, you’re oh so very wrong. Just look around.
Venom Prison make understanding at least some of the core of their work inescapable via the massive sonic crater it leaves — and, this time around, the gory video accompanying “Uterine Industrialization.” Interspersed with shots of the band playing the track, vocalist Larissa Stupar acts out a graphic depiction of the usurpation of the female body by the writhing masses of society. At one point, she’s left bleeding from her abdomen and pursued by foreboding masked figures.
She displays an impressive vocal range on the track, sharing not just a monotone anger but a deeply unsettling, sinister refraction of our most primal tendencies. She’s supported in her efforts by bandmates who feel as comfortable letting their instrumentation shine in a “traditional” extreme metal fashion as they are with devolving into utter chaos, blending the extremes within an extreme together for something that’s just plain ghastly — and perfect for those sick of monotony.
Check out “Uterine Industrialization” and preorder the record here.
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