#sentient ruin laboratories

[dustedmagazine]

Clan Dos Mortos Cicatriz — Débil (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Débil collects records originally released between 2017 and 2022 by Brazilian blackened punk outfit Clan Dos Mortos Cicatriz. The reliably sharp-eared freaks at Sentient Ruin Laboratories have made the decision to sequence the compilation in reverse-chronological order: songs from the recent Senil EP (2022) appear first, and listeners track back to tunes from the band’s first self-titled and untitled digital releases. The music is hair-raisingly exciting, and that sequencing decision makes Débil a stylistically engaging record.

The compilation is also an indispensable crash course in Clan Dos Mortos Cicatriz’s vigorous musical virtues — if “virtues” is the right word. “Good” also feels like the wrong modifier, especially for the music from Senil, which will pleasure you in direct proportion to the degree to which you feel pummeled senseless (a combo that will make sense to some — you know who you are…). Check out “Vértebra (A Revolta da Carne)”: its top-speed flirtations with D-beat’s rhythmic chaos; its käng-punk snarl; its saturation in so much reverb that the resulting sonic smear might precipitate an attack of vertigo. That’s all in the blackened punk playbook, for sure, but Clan Dos Mortos Cicatriz perform with conviction and impressive venom. It’s lively, and it’s nasty.

This reviewer finds the record increasingly enjoyable the deeper into it you get, and the older the tunes become. The early songs buzz and hum with trebly energy, and hints of Void, early Government Issue and Agnostic Front c. Victim in Pain sharpen up the already keen edges. “Palma Lisa” moves along with a demented hardcore strut that will have you flashing on John Stabb at his most chaotic. Yikes—scar tissue, indeed. For anyone who’s been sleeping on this band (hello), Débil is a wake-up call. A bracing, battering scream, with guitars.

Jonathan Shaw

[scumgristle]

https://sentientruin.bandcamp.com/album/necrotechnology

[blastbeat]

ch'ahom [germany] // blackened death metal.

“ts'ono'ot" is from the “ts'ono'ot“-ep, released on tape via sentient ruin laboratories in 2023.

[lesdeuxmuses]

Clavicvla - Degeneracy Of The 5th Density (Cyclic Law, Sentient Ruin Laboratories, 2022)

[plush-pigeon]

Robot!Volo AU

First of all i'd like to give a big shout out to @triskelion-soda for coming up with the idea and letting me use it and @robin-fable-art for helping me develop it.

In this AU Volo is a robot who somehow wakes up in an laboratory that lies in ruins, abandoned for years. There he discovers his creation was the objective of the unfinished "Project Volo", which he takes as his name. After managing to escape from the wires and rubble and eventually forging a couple documents, he joins the tech company Ginkgo Inc. for which he works at a warehouse, but as a hardware salesman as well. Not only does this give him easy access to the parts he uses to constantly improve his unfinished and damaged body, but he also hopes it will help him discover what he was made for and by who.

The more Volo learns about himself, the more selfish he finds humanity and despises it for making "life", but not committing to finishing it, and not even finding it sentient and worthy of happiness.

Cropped versions of the different drawings under cut

[devils-voice]

Abkehr - In Asche

Vinyl: Limited Edition, Clear

Label: Sentient Ruin Laboratories, Sick Man Getting Sick Records

Released: 2017

[thebibliomancer]

Universe X #5

We’ve got some Micronauts. I’m still surprised and alarmed that they’re part of Universe X’s big picture.

Although, here they are called the Ant Men.

Huh. Weren’t Scott Lang and his daughter stowed away in Tony’s refurbished Red Ronin armor? I guess they died when he tried to fight the Celestials. That’s depressing.

So red guy is Ant Man, son of Marionette and Arcturus Rann. I guess he named the team after himself.

Bug is the green one. Fun fact: the 616 version was in the Guardians of the Galaxy. Marionette is glowy, golden light woman. Neutron is the one who has the tall, conical head. Proton is the egg shaped one. Spartak is orange and has the crested helmet. And Spidra is upside down woman with all the hair.

Did you need to know their names? No and neither did I.

You’re welcome.

We’re following up from the Cap Special here so we start with Captain America’s funeral, held in the ruins of Washington DC and the grave of American democracy.

Wyatt Wingfoot, Cap’s former partner Redwing, gives the eulogy, calling Steve an unknown soldier, not really understood by the people he spent his life protecting.

So things are grim.

Not helped by funeral drama.

Redwing blows up at Lil Mar-Vell when various heroes offer to take up Cap’s role in guarding him on his quest. As far as Wyatt is concerned, Mar-Vell caused Cap’s death. By dragging him around on some weird quest and not being able to save him despite saying he has cosmic consciousness.

Also, Unpersoned Loki tries to start off on a new page with Thor but of all approaches chooses a flirty one.

I kind of want to roll up a newspaper and give Loki a smack.

The Tong of Creel attacks Windsor Castle to claim another piece of Absorbing Man.

King Captain Britain has impressive forces to throw at the problem. Himself, riding a Dragon Man. The Union Jacks. The Iron Avengers. Medusa. The new Black Widow, on loan from Russia. The new Black Knight/Prince of the Inhumans.

King Britain is more than equipped to kick the Tong of Creel’s ass in a straightforward fight. But while he’s doing one of those, someone sneaks behind the lines and just swipes the chest of Absorbing Man.

Dammit but that’s embarrassing. You know these guys are after the pieces. You know that they tend to swipe them in the chaos of battle. You should have prepared a better place for it than a glass display case! Throw it into the Sun!

Meanwhile, Mar-Vell and new protectors Venom, Thor, the circus X-Men, gorilla Hulk and child Bruce, and half-on-fire Namor go to HELL.

The Human Engineering Life Laboratory.

Acronyms are fun.

Home to the Prometheus Pit, once the entrance to the Microverse or Subatomica.

Mar-Vell needed to come here to get Psycho-Man’s Emotio-Caster. And he finds that the Prometheus Pit is clogged with some weird, organic matter.

The Ant Men are finally relevant to the story because they pop up to exposit everything. Well, Nighthawk got the opening exposition dump about Microverse stuff, too.

In the far off future, Prince Wayfinder finds a sentient sword embedded in a star that leads him to Earth of the distant past and created the subatomic world for him and his people to live on. The sword also imbued him with the Enigma Force, making him the first Captain Universe.

When Wayfinder died, the Enigma Force passed down to his descendant Arcturus Rann. But when Psycho-Man got tired of the Fantastic Four kicking his ass, he conquered his own home the Microverse, using his Emotio-Caster to fill people with fear, doubt, and hate. He even influenced Marionette to kill her own husband Rann.

The Enigma Force that was in him passed into the Realm of Death instead of choosing a new, living host and chose Dead Mar-Vell.

That’s the big inciting event for Mar-Vell’s side of the plot. That’s why he’s suddenly making moves despite having been dead for a long while.

When all hope was lost to save the Microverse from Psycho-Man, Ant Man and his Ant Men chose scorched earth. They evacuated through the Prometheus Pit and then had Man-Thing clog it up so nobody else could escape. Literally scorched. All who know fear burn at the Man-Thing’s touch.

The Microverse was on borrowed time. It was created and sustained by the Enigma Force. When that Force died with Rann, the world it created began falling apart.

The last of the Enigma Force that had been in the Microverse then went back in time and empowered the last survivor of the previous universe.

Yes, that’s right. In Universe X, Galactus and the Microverse share the same origin.

It gets betterworse, depending on your tolerance for this arc welding. Aaron Stack, the new Watcher, speculates that it wasn’t the sword that gave Wayfinder power and created a world for him, it was the star the sword was stuck into. And Galactus’ ultimate fate was to be turned into a star. Therefore, we have a bootstrap paradox time loopy.

The Enigma Force creates Galactus who gets turned into a star which creates the Enigma Force and the Microverse, which eventually collapses and sends its last energy back in time to create Galactus.

I don’t have to like it but I do have to respect Earth X and its sequels conspiracy board with yarn between various things “it’s all connected!” approach.

Neutron yanks the Emotio-Caster out of the mess for Mar-Vell, which finally collapses whatever remained of Subatomica and Man-Thing.

Venom asks what Mar-Vell needs the emotion controlling device for and he says he wants to make people happy.

Nobody seems to find this alarming or ominous!

Maybe because he bolded happy. I feel that given the device in question the emphasis should have been on “make people happy.”

So much of this quest is Mar-Vell gathering up dangerous items and going “just trust me, bro” and people do!

Also, Mr S (Cyclops) realizes that he can communicate with Phoenix in the Realm of the Dead through their psychic rapport.

In perhaps the only significant characterization that the new X-Men have gotten so far, Charmer is upset about that because she has a crush on Scott.

And while pondering the Galactus-Enigma Force ouroboros, Aaron Stack goes and digs up the Supreme Intelligence from beneath the surface of the Moon, like he’s been talking about doing for a while, and sits on him.

Five issues, an issue 0, and three specials in. And still not a really concrete idea of where we’re going with this.

Aaron at least decides to go talk to Nighthawk soon. I’m glad for him. Going out and talking to new people instead of pondering the multiverse and letting Uatu yell at him.

[screamingforyears]

IN A MINUTE: // A NEW MUSIC ROUNDUP….

“INTERSTITIAL ENMITY” is the lead single from @aberrationdeath’s forthcoming debut album titled ‘Refracture’ (3/22 @sentientruin) & it finds the Minneapolis-based quartet of JH (Aberrations), DH (Emanations), AW (Lacerations) & EC (Abominations) spreading their “Light-devouring abyssal death metal (featuring members of Void Rot, Suffering Hour & Nothingness)” vibe across 7 sprawled out mins of blackened DeathMetal.

“PASTEL PRISON” is the second single/lead track from @doodseskader’s forthcoming sophomore LP titled ‘Year Two’ (3/8) & it finds the Belgian duo of vocalist/bassist Tim De Gieter & vocalist/drummer Sigfried Burrough embracing their sensually soft side while dealing w/ an isolation that spawns a “longing & desire for companionship” across 4+ mins of grungily blown-out & caustically quiet DoomerNoize.

@lessercare are fucking back w/ “STREETWEAR,” a sampled taste from their forthcoming LP titled ‘Heel Turn’ (3/22) & it finds the EPTX-based duo of composer/lyricist/vocalist/guitarist Andres Chavez & drummer/percussionist/vocalist Zane Pacillas (w/ a special shoutout to bassist/guitarist Angel Yglecias) bringing those glammy gloomer goods across a surging 3:43 clip of six-string ringing, low-end pushing & passionately cooed PostPunk.

“SPLICE” is the lead single/track from @m00npuss’ forthcoming LP titled ‘Death Is Coming’ (5/3 @tgic_recs) & it finds the Denver based trio of vocalist/bassist Crissy Cuellar, guitarist Ethan A Hahn & drummer Cory Hager stutteringly agitating their way across 3 mins of murkily morose & start/stopping NoiseRock.

////

[dustedmagazine]

Délirant — Thoughteater (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

The title of this new LP from Délirant threatens to amp up the dork factor, perhaps to the detriment of the dissonant, menacing environment the music seeks to create. Anyone who played D&D will be familiar with the thoughteater, a solitary and rather stupid beastie, resident in the ethereal plane — and there’s an appealing irony to the creatures’ dim-witted nature. They consumed the energy of thought and other psychological phenomena, but even that diet was unable to increase or sharpen the creatures’ intelligence. The extent to which DB, the Spanish musician who is the sole member of Délirant, has the D&D monster in mind is unclear. Certainly, there’s nothing especially ethereal about the angular, spiky black metal on this record. It’s harsh and heavy noise. But will it suck your brains dry?

Given current socio-political conditions, in the US and elsewhere, the flip answer to that is: We should be so lucky. But no such consolations seem to be in the offing. Perhaps, then, the dissonant, kvlty black metal Délirant creates is what’s needed, as the soundtrack to decline, violence and mounting cultural chaos. Lots of black metal acts have been actively inviting precisely that sort of social phenomena. Some bands (the now largely disappeared Cascadian variety, the more radical of the RABM acts) do so as outraged reporters on humanity’s insufficiency to itself and to its capacity to manage existence on our increasingly distressed earthball. Other black metal acts (the satanic, the cynically misanthropic, the race-baiters and corpse-painted trollish types) have done so with a sort of mordant or mean-spirited joy. Swell.

“Mordant” and “mean-spirited” are modifiers accurately applied to one of DB’s other solo projects, the nasty, raw-punk-inflected Hässlig, which mostly recently issued its Apex Predator tape. Elsewhere this reviewer noted discomfort with some of the project’s semiotics: the recourse to Germanic language alongside of titles like “Slaves” and “Watch Them Hang.” Maybe it’s just button-pushing, maybe it’s sharp-edged irony. But when Alternative for Deutschland is ascendant and Elon Musk is telling right-wing Germans to stop acknowledging the weight of their very particular history, irony isn’t a particularly potent weapon — even from the relative distance of Valencia, DB’s home province in Spain. And maybe it’s just these ears, but when this reviewer hears Délirant’s guitar tone and angularity, he conjures the shape and textures of middle-period releases from Deathspell Omega, über button-pushers and players of peek-a-boo with fascists. It doesn’t help that DB claims Bone Awl and Ildjarn as primary sonic influences for Hässlig.

So: 2025 and we are still fussing over nationalisms and fascism in black metal and adjacent subgenres in heavy music. It’s tired stuff. Your reviewer is a tired man, tapped out by anxiety and rage and his own resentments. The kicker? I really, really like Apex Predator and enjoy, to a somewhat lesser extent, Thoughteater’s friction and dissonance. Sometimes it would be swell to stop questioning, digging on the effing internet and worrying over the implied politics of what’s spinning through the tape deck’s heads or buzzing through the Bluetooth speakers. Maybe it would be nice to take the edge off, to let the thoughteater suck away on all that ambient fear and twitchy thinking. But it won’t help the earthball, or the cultures churning their way toward idiocy and extinction.

Jonathan Shaw

[xasha777]

In the distant future, the remnants of humanity have scattered across the galaxy, building new civilizations amidst the stars. One such civilization, known as Aetheria, is ruled by an enigmatic and powerful figure known as the Wraith King. Clad in obsidian armor, his presence alone commands respect and fear. By his side stands Lady Elara, a warrior of unmatched skill and determination, whose loyalty to the Wraith King is unwavering.

Aetheria, a realm of floating cities and vast, dark forests, is a place where ancient technology and mysticism blend seamlessly. The Wraith King and Lady Elara maintain order and justice, their reign marked by peace, albeit through an iron fist. However, beneath this veneer of tranquility, a hidden secret pulses at the heart of Aetheria—an ancient artifact known as the Chrono Crystal, capable of manipulating time itself.

One stormy night, as thunder echoed through the stone halls of the Wraith King's fortress, a visitor from Earth's past arrived. His name was Daniel Coit Gilman, a renowned scholar and founder of the prestigious Johns Hopkins University. Gilman had been studying time dilation theories when an experiment went awry, catapulting him through time and space to Aetheria.

Confused and disoriented, Gilman found himself in the presence of the Wraith King and Lady Elara. They listened intently as he recounted his journey, recognizing the importance of his knowledge. The Wraith King, sensing an opportunity, proposed a pact: if Gilman could help them unlock the full potential of the Chrono Crystal, they would return him to his own time.

Gilman, intrigued and driven by scientific curiosity, agreed. He and Lady Elara embarked on a quest to uncover the secrets of the Chrono Crystal, delving into ancient ruins and deciphering long-lost texts. Along the way, they encountered various challenges, from rogue AI sentinels guarding forgotten knowledge to treacherous landscapes filled with temporal anomalies.

As they journeyed together, a bond formed between Gilman and Elara. She was fascinated by his tales of a bygone era on Earth, while he admired her courage and unyielding spirit. Their quest led them to the Nexus of Time, a hidden chamber beneath the fortress where the Chrono Crystal was kept.

In the Nexus, Gilman discovered that the Chrono Crystal was not just a relic of power but a sentient entity, capable of choosing its wielder. It communicated with Gilman, revealing that it had been waiting for someone with both the knowledge of the past and the vision of the future to unlock its true potential.

With Lady Elara's help, Gilman performed a ritual that activated the Chrono Crystal, merging his scientific expertise with the mystical energies of Aetheria. Time itself bent to their will, allowing them to glimpse the future and alter the past. They saw visions of a united galaxy, free from the shadows of tyranny and war.

But such power came at a cost. The Wraith King, sensing the loss of his control, sought to seize the Chrono Crystal for himself. In a climactic battle within the Nexus of Time, Gilman and Elara faced the Wraith King. The fortress trembled as energies clashed, threatening to unravel the very fabric of reality.

In the end, it was Elara's unwavering resolve and Gilman's strategic mind that prevailed. The Wraith King was defeated, his dark influence shattered. With the Chrono Crystal in their possession, Gilman and Elara used its power to reshape Aetheria, establishing a new era of enlightenment and peace.

True to their promise, they created a temporal gateway that returned Gilman to his own time. As he stepped through, he looked back at Elara, a silent promise passing between them. He returned to his laboratory, forever changed by his journey, and documented his incredible adventure, ensuring that the legacy of Aetheria and the Chrono Crystal would never be forgotten.

In Aetheria, Lady Elara stood as the new ruler, her reign marked by wisdom and justice, guided by the knowledge and vision she gained from her journey with Daniel Coit Gilman.

[sludgewarden]

[lesdeuxmuses]

Clavicvla - Sepulchral Blessing (Cyclic Law, Sentient Ruin Laboratories, 2019)

[dakhmagnasu]

Hexerei - Ancient Evil Spirits

Hexerei– Ancient Evil Spirits (2021) Sentient Ruin Laboratories Finland - 2022

[ Musicraft ✮ ]