Virginia-based industrial metal nihilists Hold Me Down reach the milestone of the second full-length album, christened under the name “Devour” and designed as further progression of their abysmal exploration into the outer realms of synthetic sonic abandon. What unfolds on this second mechanized auditory assault from the Richmond voidscapers is an all-corroding synthesis of industrialized terror harkening back to formative years of extreme industrial music when bands like Swans, Throbbing Gristle, Skinny Puppy and Godflesh were looking for new pathways to transform their times’ confusion and alienation into an oppressive audial dehumanization. A torrential onslaught of pounding drum machines and atonal guitars creating a physical and mental cage of submission, within which the listener is trapped and cornered, only to be further punished by a white, colorless, and sterile burden of noise. The only human thing toiling within the ashen framework of this stark and dystopian cyberscape is vocalist Jim Gullickson’s devastated voice, the last spasm of humanity disintegrating within the aseptic turbulence of a paranoid, life-draining contraption. The way the album is built and conceived is intended to mimic human sensory dismantlement, or its destruction from within, similarly to how our digitalized society erases individuals leaving only empty shells. The senses are used as sensors to gain access to the listener’s humanity, into which an injection of sterilizing sequences and nerve-eating samples are inserted to scrape the consciousness clean. A new era of post-industrial enslavement and banishment of any human thrive has just cast its purifying shadow across the organic frailty and insignificance of man.
