Perfumed Saturnine Angels - Saccharine Curses Exhaled in the Wind (2023)

I know Garry Brents as Gonemage, the music project that combines black metal with chiptune and it's as crazy as it sounds. The project conceived as a duo, now, after Brandon Nurick's passing, continues as Brents solo project with the debut album called Saccharine Curses Exhaled in the Wind as a homage to Nurick's name.

While this time Brents doesn't use the electronica samples and, overall, sounds more "serious" for the metal music fans, his work still surprised me a lot. There is something in the quality of the sound (and particularly his vocals) that makes me feel like I've got hit in the head with the audio wave. It's loud and it's overwhelming in the best possible way. But the compositions are far from being homogeneous walls of noise: they are experimentally diverse with mathrock-like pace changes going from slow guitar-only passages to fast and angry, energy-fueled madness as rapidly as you can imagine. 

And I have to mention that: the cover art is at the god-tier level.

Saccharine Curses Exhaled in the Wind costs whatever you want to pay.

Gonemage - Handheld Demise (2022)

Gonemage - Mystical Extraction (2021)

Check: Trash Judgement

Country: Texas, US

Genre: math black metal

Label: Zegema Beach Records

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Gonemage - Handheld Demise (2022)

I already know what to expect from Garry Brents, but it doesn't mean I'm always ready for the chaotic attack he serves on each of his albums. Handheld Demise is only a proof for this as from the very first notes, Gonemage's chiptune black metal overwhelms the listener's ears.

Just like his artworks suggest every time, the music here sounds like taken from a particularly unnerving but also entertaining computer game. The pace is always as fast as Sonic's speed runs, the energy must be the result of some sort of life boost while the black metal's aggressive sounds simply overflow the computer-generated tunes. As the artist summarizes it, "Black Metal/Chiptune convergence set in pixelated dream realms". The results are absurdly chaotic, but this is the very best feature of Brents' music. The game references are sometimes even less subtle when the artist reaches for sounds that everybody knows from their favourite oldschool games (as it is in The Suffering and Endurance). 

On the other hand, thematically and lyrics-wise, it is very much the metal gloom that rules on the album. This clash is what makes the project so special, perhaps the most unique one within the black metal community. 

Handheld Demise costs 3 USD.

Gonemage - Mystical Extraction (2021)

Check: Father Time's Grandfather Clock

Country: Texas, US

Genre: chiptune black metal

Label: WereGnome Records/Xenoglossy Productions/Fiadh Productions

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Gonemage - Mystical Extraction (2021)

I'll be honest, chiptune is the music genre I appreciate the least to call it mildly. However, Gonemage is the first project ever that made me question this view. Garry Brents' works combine it with energetic and dark black metal and the result are great, available now for the audience on the project's debut album called Mystical Extraction.

Earlier this year I posted about Lorem Ipsum, the French neoclassical post-hardcore band, and I was pretty much shocked with that blend, Gonemage though is something even more peculiar. Brents is an artist who has an impressive resume of projects he's been involved in, this one is surely the weirdest (although it's just my assumption). The album is meant to be a concept album, the theme of which is, quite naturally, a story within a video game - more about it with some quite vivid details can be read on the album's Bandcamp Website.

The colourful midi sounds of chiptune here, after combining them with the metal pace and vocals, get a different vibe to them - rapid, dangerous and extremely engaging. Especially that the metal elements here are taken from its darkest and most violent subgenres and only the chiptune tones this down a bit. Still, this is the kind of music that gives the audience so much energy, it is impossible not to dance and/or pogo to it. And most certainly one that is very unique, a music born from a combination I would never even thought is possible.

Mystical Extraction costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: The Gullying and the Purple Hoax

Country: Texas, US

Genre: chiptune black metal

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