Ok.... ZA Here... Decided quickly last month that Finality would not be the last Rancid Abomination CD and that Rancid Abomination would go down a different route from now on. Originally conceived as a horrible black metal one man joke band, rancid abomination wrote evil lyrics on purpose that are disgustingly bad at times. But that's in the past as I move forward to redefine Rancid Abomination and what it should be like with the new cd...
I conceived this cd last month. I was reading the Mothman Prophecies book by John A Keel. It's a book about unexplained things that happened in West Virginia in the 1960s. It's a fascinating read. But it's also a scary read as it goes into A) UFO Sightings B) Men in black sightings C) Alien Contactees D) Other weird crap and E) Sightings of a 7 foot tall bird man thing with red eyes called the mothman.
This book is one of my favorite books ever and it inspired me to write a concept album on paranormal stuff... I wanted to do this for at least one month and I decided to write the music for this album earlier this week.. I entitled the album "Staring into the eyes of madness" and it's out on noisetrade to download for FREE right now.. Download it here I composed it with a twist... The usual rancid abomination sound was ditched for an expanded sound that adds the following elements on top of the old RA sound without losing that sound much:
A) Totally new rhythm guitar style inspired by Unleashing Vengeance's guitar style but done more in a black metal way. The triplet infested riffs are still there but they are done with muted notes and black metal chords now. This is more of a groovy styled guitar sound and it fits C) well and it unfortunately replaces the old blackened thrash sound the band used to have but... Whatever.
B) Atmospheric Black Metal (think summoning) elements such as medieval instruments, long song lengths, slow drumming and such are used in the 3 atmospheric black metal type songs on the cd... These are generally slow and epic sounding and have trumpet in them and medieval elements thrown in in one case.
C) Far more varied drumming. Drum beats are really experimental sounding on this cd and it shows. Some Drum beats sound quite jazzy sounding. Others are "Hybrid drum beats" based on 1) Rancid Abomination Drum beats and 2) beats other bands do... Bands such as A) Dimmu Borgir B) Summoning C) Unleashing Vengeance and D) Melechesh (!) That being said I am not trying to sound like Oriental (Middle Eastern music inspired) Black Metal here.. I just have been listeneing to that stuff a lot lately and was SLIGHTLY inspired by it. Not inspired enough to want to sound just like it mind you! You will here drum beats that have part of them sound like part of a drum beat Melechesh uses but not the whole thing.. It ends up sounding very experimental but cool nonetheless.
This next one is completely expected coming from me, me being the biggest WINDIR fan in North america by now!
D) HUGE Inspiration from WINDIR:
This cd is the first cd I've ever done to incorporate WINDIR-ESQUE folk metal melodies into the album. It's huge. I based them on PARTS of a lead guitar melody from the legendary Windir Song Fagning. and altered the pitch of the whole melody than transposed parts of the melody several times by several pitches to get the melodies I do in the cd that sound really folky sounding. But don't worry. This isn't cheezy folk metal stuff here. It's fucking windir. They were the least cheezy folk metal/folk inspired black metal band ever so...
Also some of the cd has some industrial elements thrown in in places. Mostly it was done to add some other influences in. It's especially noticeable on tracks 3 and 5.
So now Rancid Abomination blends in influences from Summoning, Windir AND slight Melechesh influences now... Heh...
Older elements of the band are still there, such as the trademarked delayed harmony style used in 90% of my music, deep evil sounding synths, tons of blastbeats, scary sounding music and creepy lyrics and vocals.
Lyrical inspiration comes from several paranormal things that have happened in US and England since the 1960's. As a firm believer I know some of these things are real. And some of them are quite disturbing...
Track 1 deals with alien Abduction... It's called "The Experiment". It's a brutally fast song with a symphonic style to it. Alien Abduction is a scary concept to open the cd with I think. The song explores screen memories, alien experiments, and other things... The vocal production in it is a bit lacking but it's not too bad. It also has some windir styled melodies..
Track 2 "Abode of the Phantom" deals with a weird "invisible" bigfoot sighting in maine I read about online. It's weird as hell and the song about it is even weirder sounding. Extremely experimental and ugly sounding, the song has some very dissonant chords and fucked up sounding melodies, and some very groovy drum beats too.. It also has more thrashy and death metal styled druim beats as well..
Track 3 "Mr Apol" deals with a mysterious alien visitor who fed prophecies to John keel in the 1960's through a contactee in Long Island New york. The contactee met this alien several times and it would speak through the contactee and give Keel lots of fucked up prophecies, that were almost true but not quite... A few were however and it was weird... The song itself is very heavy and has a brutally heavy thrashy black metal styled start and an industrial styled finish..It also has a windir styled melody in it.
Track 4 "Black Eyes" is about reports of "Black Eyed Children". Black eyed children supposedly show up on doors of remote towns late at night and asked to be let in. The people who see them experience insane amounts of fear and refuse to let them in. The ones who let them in suffer cancer, dead pets, nose bleeds, radiation exposure and worse. The kids themselves look like kids with out of place clothing and completely black eyes. The song itself is an interesting mix of summoning styled atmospheric black metal and Groovy Black Metal in the vein of Melechesh minus middle eastern elements... It's slow and very evil sounding but very groovy. It's my favorite song on the cd..
Track 5 "Stalker of the Night" is the longest song on the whole album. At 11+ Minutes long it is an epic Medieval/atmospheric black metal (think summoning) song about the ancient English Legend of Spring Heeled Jack. Spring heeled Jack was a weird winged phantom that showed up in Victorian london in 1837 and later. He was able to jump great heights, breath fire and he had glowing red eyes. He attacked and hurt several woman supposedly but always got away by leaping over fences and things.. He was never caught. The song is a slow epic atmospheric black metal song with mideival music elements thrown in including medieval percussion, such as kettle drums and tambourines, and such. Mix that in with black metal and some Windir Styled melodies and some industrial elements and you get this song. It also has clean vocals but they came out bad... They sound a bit badly mixed and produced but they are there...
Track 6 "Wendigo", is about reported phantoms that resemble the Wendigo Creature from Native American Mythology. I am specifically talking about things that have human bodies and deer's heads. They show up a lot in sighting reports. There is one report in Colorado where a woman see's something like this haunting her cabin while she and her husband went out hunting into Colorado. Another frightening encounter happens in Oklahoma where 2 guys go up to a mountain to do Astrophotography. They run into wildlife, all running away from them. They then see the phantom, human shape with a deer's head and glowing red eyes. This story scared the shit out of me. So I wrote about it in this song. The song is a fast heavy song with strong Dimmu Borgir and Windir Elements thrown in. It also has some more groovy drum beats in the chorus but they are rarely used and the riffs in this song are super complex and haphazard sounding..
Track 7 "Pukwudgie" is about sightings of "Pukwudgies" in the Freetown state forest. Pukwudgies are evil dwarf things that show up in Local Native American Folklore. People supposedly see them if they go into the Freetown state forest, a supposedly haunted forest, in the same state as me (Massachusetts). Whether they are hallucinating it or it's something being put into their head is beyond me. But it's happening. The song is similar to the last one and has heavy dimmu Borgir influence in it and also has a very sinister sounding melody being used.. At the end it gets a bit groovy but the beginning is more of a dimmu type song with evil melodies.. It also has a Windir styled melody thrown in..
Track 8 "Staring into the eyes of madness" is about the Mothman itself. Mothman was seen by hundreds of people in West Virginia in 1967. Right after the sightings ended, the nearby bridge leading into the town colapsed. Many people say the mothman was a death omen. People who saw it died in the bridge collapse. But I don't think so. I do think it was supernatural in origin because it could fly WITHOUT flapping it's wings and could take off vertically like a helicopter without flapping it's wings. It also had Hypnotic red eyes and people who saw it were terrified. Again like Black Eyed Kids, it induced tons of fear. The song itself is a lot more sinister sounding than the last two... It is the second longest song on the album and has foreboding type elements thrown in including a very deep creepy keyboard and evil sounding folk melodies played by trumpets. It also has a Windir styled melody in the break.. It has clean vocals, and unlike track 5 they came out good....
PHEW: That was a lot to type out...
Anyway, I am pleased with the way this album came out in every category but production which is off but it's black metal, so who cares (!). I'm no "production Nazi" and I think maybe the bad production makes it sound better. Lyrically it's awesome and the whole sound of it is very diverse and weird sounding at times and at other times sounds like older RA stuff plus some new influences... It's cool... All the influences mentioned in this post are really good bands people (minus maybe Dimmu), they are worth checking out!
Anyway that's the end of this insanely long post. But before I go... Check out my youtube channel for updates...
