WATCH THE MUSIC VIDEO FOR FLESH MARKET BELOW
Stream Flesh Market via Apple Music | TIDAL | Deezer | Bandcamp and Spotify
Pre-order Atrocity Machine here.
Speaking on the album announcement, Willow Ryan (guitar, bass, synths, vocals) comments: “With this album we wanted to embody the absurdity of living in a country where atrocity is so commonplace that it becomes mundane. How compartmentalizing these horrors day to day takes its toll. How the warped machine-like systems birthed out of capitalism and white supremacy that cause these atrocities become attached to you. They fuse themselves to your skin and bones until you live in grotesque comfort and familiarity with the fear and anxiety they create. All the while being forced to ensure their continued existence.
“Musically, we decided to incorporate more harsh electronics, taking influence from some of our favorites like Wolf Eyes, Pharmakon, and Killing Joke to create this doomed cyberpunk horror soundtrack. We’re also thrilled to have Prosthetic Records behind us once again to help us obtain our vision.”
Of Flesh Market, Ryan continues: “Flesh Market is maybe the most diverse song on the album. It does a great job at summarizing the wider aesthetic and thematic vision of the record, combining sludge, black death doom, and industrial noise. It’s about the way in which corporate capitalism seeks to dehumanize us and reduce us to meat.”
BODY VOID‘s morose view of the world hasn’t lightened any since the release of 2021’s critically acclaimed Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth, although Atrocity Machine
embraces absurdity on a new level. The subject matter in hand takes stock of the oppressive systems and societal functions that continually degrade the lives of millions as they passively become a cog in the very machine that subjugates them. Police violence is the thematic centre of the unravelling horror on Atrocity Machine, highlighted specifically on the track Cop Show
which details the commercialisation of fear and violence being turned into a spectacle.
The grotesque reality of living in a capitalist landscape, with the value of human life decreasing daily provides infinite fuel for anxiety and trauma. The lurid tones of modern day news media are the backdrop to an Akira-inspired encounter with divine violence, Atrocity Machine
offers a cosmic view of living under such systems of oppression. Specifically that the status quo can’t last forever; a self-destructive society will indeed eventually destroy itself.
The suffocating nature of oppression seeps into the sound of Atrocity Machine too. Although still a doom band at its core, BODY VOID
in 2023 has expanded to incorporate dexterous layers of synths, samples and noise that makes their industrial-sludge sonic emissions an asphyxiating listening experience. The band credit producer Ben Greenberg (Portrayal of Guilt, VR Sex, Soft Kill) with bringing their electronic elements into a cohesive sound that embraces heaviness and claustrophobic chaos in equal measure.
Artwork is thematically on point – inspired by Tetsuo: The Iron Man (a person becoming a machine) – and created by Ethan Lee McCarthy. Marking a shift from their previously black-and-white-only artwork, Atrocity Machine is both visually and sonically drawing a line in the sand, delineating the beginning of a new chapter for BODY VOID.