CHAIN GANG GRAVE returns with debut full-length album "Cement Mind"; new track streaming
"The untidy sounds coming from Chain Gang Grave are an assimilation of the band's name itself, a sum of its parts broken down to the frayed and sizzling circuitry. There's an unstable balance of lurching heaviness here, but far from typical or cliched... The band delivers dissonant rock structures with a jagged melody built underneath the smell of burning hair and thrift store perfume. These elements are placed on the coveted top shelf along with other valuable anti-trophies as a glaring warning, and a prize, to future cave dwelling primitives..."
–Mike IX Williams, Eyehategod
After some years of silence, Brooklyn band Chain Gang Grave returns with a surprise attack: its first full-length album, Cement Mind, coming April 16th.
Stream new track "Backwards Reaction," here:
Chain Gang Grave prowled the New York City underground for much of the '10s, purveying its own wildly creative and memorable sewer-stomp that lurked in the cracks between the more definable sounds of its contemporaries. Chain Gang Grave was essentially a hardcore band, but too complex to be neatly written off as such. Behind peals of acidic guitar, shouted vocals, and grimy production, its songs writhed and contorted into astonishing positions. The band birthed music as unpredictable as it was anthemic, expressing equal love for Black Flag, Rites of Spring, Immolation, and many deep cuts in between. On the strength of two EPs and a 7-inch, it made an outspoken fan out of Eyehategod frontman Mike IX Williams, among others.
Stereogum offered these words in 2015: "The band’s parade of horrors is seamless, regardless of the nearest point of stylistic reference... A melting pot of antisocial tendencies."
Four years since its last release, Chain Gang Grave returns, reborn as a duo, consisting solely of founding members Andrew Lanza and Jason Markowitz. Friends since high school, born and raised in South Brooklyn, Lanza and Markowitz were always the heart of the band; their musical telepathy is the force that drives the music down its circuitous paths.
The lean new incarnation of Chain Gang Grave rips the gate right off its hinges with Cement Mind. Songs like "Backwards Reaction," premiered today, are gloriously raw, bursting with end-of-the-world urgency and melodies that subjugate the ears. Out of squalls of feedback, Lanza's playing slithers from the desperate and hellbound, to the triumphant, and back again – one never knows where a Chain Gang Grave song is heading, but it is always the right place. Markowitz' drumming channels the styles of two dissimilar icons: Bill Stevenson's primal thump and Dave Lombardo's metallic hailstorms.
Lanza, now handling vocals in addition to guitar and bass, states: "The album is split between the political and the personal. Some songs address the failures of the government and how poisonous far-right politics and conspiracies are, from the ground up. Other songs are attempts at verbalizing thoughts and feelings about confronting and overcoming mental illness."
Cement Mind was recorded and mixed by Lanza and Markowitz at their home studio in Brooklyn, and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege (Poison Idea, Dropdead, Ceremony). The artwork was created by Lanza.
Cement Mind marks the welcome return of one of NYC's most enthralling young bands. A true original, Chain Gang Grave continues marching to its own beat but may well find a new home in 2021 amongst fans of current favorites like Uniform and Portrayal of Guilt.
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Tracklist:
1) Cement Mind
2) Backwards Reaction
3) Strawberry Lye
4) Fever Dream
5) Money Cocoon
6) A Touch of Evil
7) Tinfoil Brain Leech
8) Psychic Commode
9) Denial Made Flesh/Painseeker
1) Cement Mind
2) Backwards Reaction
3) Strawberry Lye
4) Fever Dream
5) Money Cocoon
6) A Touch of Evil
7) Tinfoil Brain Leech
8) Psychic Commode
9) Denial Made Flesh/Painseeker
Lineup:
Andrew Lanza - guitar, bass, vocals
Jason Markowitz - drums
Discography:
When Your Friends Become Cops, 2014
Bury Them and Keep Quiet, 2015
We Fight Entropy/Suffer for Your Art, 2017
When Your Friends Become Cops, 2014
Bury Them and Keep Quiet, 2015
We Fight Entropy/Suffer for Your Art, 2017
Cement Mind, 2021
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"The band’s parade of horrors is seamless, regardless of the nearest point of stylistic reference… A melting pot of antisocial tendencies..."
–Stereogum
"You can smell the hardcore oozing... in a discordant, noisy, anti-social, you know, FLIPPER, kind of way… Come together, fall apart, reconvene and destroy.”
–Noisey
"With Chain Gang Grave, you get something that is punk, ugly and hemorrhaging noise... The hardcore version of a snakehandling sermon on the eve of judgment day.”
–Decibel
–Stereogum
"You can smell the hardcore oozing... in a discordant, noisy, anti-social, you know, FLIPPER, kind of way… Come together, fall apart, reconvene and destroy.”
–Noisey
"With Chain Gang Grave, you get something that is punk, ugly and hemorrhaging noise... The hardcore version of a snakehandling sermon on the eve of judgment day.”
–Decibel
"Mixing sour and sweet might be done to death, but few do it as sharply as Chain Gang Grave."
–Invisible Oranges
–Invisible Oranges
"This duo blends Hardcore Punk, Death Rock, and Death Metal to manifest a sound that’s really 1 of 1. Chain Gang Grave is depraved AF."
–CVLT Nation
–CVLT Nation
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