The industrial metal act Author & Punisher came on my radar not too long ago when I was researching bands for the upcoming Blowup festival in Helsinki. Coming across a picture of his (un)usual live set-up, I was immediately intrigued by this one-man industrial doom and drone project. The self-build impressive musical contraption is quite the sight to behold and the soundscapes that get burped out of that machine are monstrous. So when the news hit my mailbox that he was releasing another album called Beastland in the beginning of October, I just had to check it out.

With the first 2 tracks alone you already get a good idea of what you’ll be getting further down the line. Pharmacide opens slowly with a bunch of random noises that seem to clash but gradually get forced by Tristan into something that can pass for a rhythm and melody, thus a song structure. The soundscapes are so damn loaded that this is literally some of the heaviest music I’ve heard in a long time. You get a feeling of impending dread, a massive machine that is coming your way crushing everything along its path, deserving the tag “industrial doom” wholeheartedly. The music sounds at most times like a struggle between extremes; man & machine, melody & aggression, randomness & structure,… and seeing how Tristan creates and performs his music, it quite literally looks like a constant struggle. The beauty and captivating thing of this music, is that somehow despite all the seemingly clashing extremes, everything works so well together as if they were always meant to be. Just listen and look at Nihil Strength, with it’s repetitive crushing machine drone that still clearly has an underlining human touch and melody no machine could ever create on its own.

Underneath all the doom-laden harshness it’s remarkable how in a lot of songs you can find an underlying (almost poppy) melody that probably would create a nice little track on its own but gets all the more interesting drowned in all of the noise his machines create. Check out Ode To Bedlam with sometimes almost fragile vocals or The Speaker Is Systematically Blown that is surprisingly enough not blowing your eardrums (or speakers for that matter) but actually has a beautiful melody woven through it. Overall, Author & Punisher‘s work at times sounds like industrial legends Nine Inch Nails (during their golden years) and progressive/alternative metal outfit Deftones (some of the more clean vocals and melodies) made a baby that was brought up by its godfather Godflesh…

It’s hard to perfectly describe the sonic experience you get thrown at you with this new record from Author & Punisher, it’s simply something you have to experience yourself. Black Sabbath always claimed that their doomy sound came from their urge to recreate the sounds of the machines at the factories they or their families worked at, Tristan absolutely perfected that creative output to the teeth. Beastland will grab you, get you to fear death by machine and keep you too captivated to actually run for your life. Go ahead, you know you want to experience this pure dread…

Release date: October 5th, 2018
Label: Relapse Records
Tracklist:
1. Pharmacide
2. Nihil Strength
3. Ode To Bedlam
4. The Speaker Is Systematically Blown
5. Nazarene
6. Apparition
7. Night Terror
8. Beastland