Walking Bombs and Gridfailure, two of the most abrasive, unholy entities to emerge from New York’s Hudson Valley, have teamed up for a new musical experiment, Suicide By Citizenship, which will be released through Nefarious Industries on April 26. Available in digital and physical format, the release may be pre-ordered now. The tune “Armchair Expert” is also available for streaming on the respective Bandcamp pages.
Gridfailure‘s David Brenner has created a new video for “Supply and Demand of the American Soul”, five minutes of lamenting a vanishing way of life replete with Walking Bombs man Morgan Y. Evans performing lead vocals and trombone, Brenner providing background vocals, guitar, theremin, and effects, and producer Jay Andersen playing drums and synths. This is the arrival of a new weird, something that moves beyond the traditional boundaries of noise/avant-garde/experimental and toward something that is utterly hypnotic and hallucinatory in its sense of despair and the death grips of hopelessness.
Evans says, “We are constantly urged to throw more bodies on the pyres of industrialization and consumerism. Nothing is ever enough. Upton Sinclair was writing about this shit in 1906 and we still never learned. The musical outcome here thrilled me as it kind of sounds like being lost in the fog and almost seeing a light out. The trombone brought out some jazzy, William S. Burroughs unease to it also and I am very glad I am playing the instrument semi-regularly again for the first time in several decades. I used to be first chair in high school and gave it up for a long time due to self-esteem issues after I spent a number of bad years as a drug addict. Twenty years later give or take, Doc from Bad Brains and my girlfriend Elizabeth both encouraged me to play it more and here we are. It has felt wonderful, if daunting. I love that it is on here though since the influence of jazz is one American invention we can be proud of.”
Brenner adds, “Morgan’s trombone and repetitive, trailing vocal melody make this one of my favorite songs on the album. Visually, this one transports me to Naked Lunch, 1984, Blade Runner. It’s the sound of civilized decay, urban plight; the American Dream shattered by the 1%. The weary masses huddle in former utopias, surrounded by empty factories, leaving a rotted carcass of brief prosperity and infinite ruin now stand where proud forests once stood. It’s about the working masses, dead dreams, dying hopes. The soundtrack to survival among thieves and backstabbers.”
Suicide By Citizenship features guest contributions from Thomas Andrew Doyle (Tad, Brothers of the Sonic Cloth), Laura Pleasants (Kylesa, the Discussion), Mike Score (All Out War, Below the Frost), Brett Netson (Built to Spill, Earth, Snakes), Elizabeth Le Fey (Globelamp), BJ Allen (Full Scale Riot), Benjamin Levitt (Megalophobe), and more. The audio was mastered by Anderson and the record completed with artwork by Brenner.
TOUR DATES
GRIDFAILURE w/ Zud:
5/01/2019 The Bungalow Bar & Grill – Manchester, NH
5/02/2019 Tubby’s – Kingston, NY
5/03/2019 J. B. Lovedraft’s Micropub – Harrisburg, PA w/ Voarm
5/04/2019 Atlas Brew Works – Washington, DC w/ Voarm, Radamanthys