![]() Turning these wounds toward ourselves can be seen as an attempt at “balancing feedback”, within a never-ending positive feedback loop of cause and effect. It is an instinctive inward response to a world of increasing outward violence, greed, and oppression. But this behavior does not happen in a vacuum. In our cells, our minds, our politics and our species, humans are self-destructing. “Devour” uses self-cannibalization as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans on cellular, individual, societal and species-wide scales. As one of the premiere vanguards of modern industrial and power electronics, Chardiet continuously pushes the genres and everyone involved in them, and with the release of Devour, she has once again changed the game. Devour also explores new sonic territory, with denser electronics, groovier hooks, and moments of her most unhinged vocal deliveries to date. The A and B sides were each recorded as a continuous take with vocals from start to finish, marking a totally new process for the artist that allows the ferocity and immediacy of her live performance to resonate throughout. The album was recorded by Ben Greenberg (Uniform) and is the first Pharmakon album recorded live in studio. Each of the five songs echoes a stage of grief associated with this cyclical chamber of self-destruction and the chaos surrounding us that leads us to devour ourselves in an attempt to balance the agony. Like her previous albums, Devour comes with a strong concept that is exorcised throughout the five demolishing tracks on the album, using imagery and language of self-cannibalism as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans. ![]() The end is nigh, and there’s so much noise yet to be made.Devour marks the fourth full-length record from Margaret Chardiet’s project Pharmakon and her most intense output to date. Both a cry for help and a call to arms, it’s like being stuck, frantic, on a sinking ship with no shore in sight.īut surrender is not the album’s message if anything, it feels like an angry rebuke to the notion of “Keep Calm and Carry On.” That passivity, Devour suggests, is deadly. This mercurial approach makes for an engaging listen even when Chardiet’s mangled industrial melodies and steam-pressed beats are on full blast, sending high-pitched squeals and waves of static crashing in all directions. Each track on Devour mirrors a different stage of mourning: denial (the churning “Homeostasis”), anger (“Spit It Out,” with its throbbing bass and chainsaw-like feedback), bargaining (the turbine-engine chug of “Self-Regulating System”), depression (“Deprivation,” harrowing in its severity), and acceptance (the scabrous “Pristine Panic / Cheek By Jowl”). This is for the rest of us, who understand that chaos, madness, pain and even self-destruction are natural and inevitable responses to an unjust and disgusting world of our own making.”ĭevour also documents the ways that empathy-a recurring theme in Pharmakon’s bleak, yet deeply human, catalog-gives way to grief. Or as Chardiet puts it in a potent artist statement, “To be well adjusted in this system is to be oblivious and unfeeling. ![]() ( Uniform guitarist Ben Greenberg cut the album’s five corrosive pieces straight to tape in the studio, keeping a set list of sorts in mind for side A and B.)ĭeepening the album’s darkness is the fact that it’s a concept record about self-cannibalism-the ways in which we ravage both ourselves and the world around us. That sense of urgency is especially apparent on Devour, her fourth album for Sacred Bones, and the first that fully reflects Pharmakon’s notoriously confrontational live show. Rather than recede into the background, Margaret Chardiet’s savage noise compositions seize you by the shoulders with a violent shake. ![]() Listening to Pharmakon has never exactly been a passive act. Pre-order buy pre-order buy you own this wishlist in wishlist go to album go to track go to album go to track
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