Bloody Panda completes new album

New York City experimental doom metal pack Bloody Panda has completed work on its new album, entitled Summon. The record will see an August 11, 2009 North American release date via Profound Lore Records.

Fronted by Japanese siren and accomplished visual artist Yoshiko Ohara, whose death defying wails have at once drawn comparison to Diamanda Galas, Björk and Jarboe, Bloody Panda creates unique, affecting heavy music that combines visceral power, pained beauty and devastating emotion. Since its formation in 2005, Bloody Panda has skillfully combined the brutal with the entrancing, generating buzz with the UG metal sect and the indie set alike, each drawn to the band's super-strength songs, funeral doom arrangements and the sight and sound of a petite woman chanting and screaming in both English and Japanese alongside four imposing musicians sporting executioner's masks.

Recorded at New York's Excello Recordings and Secret Weapon Studios with engineer Jason Marcucci (Flaming Lips, The White Stripes) and the band's Josh Rothenberger, Summon is a nightmarish, cryptic trip that boosts Bloody Panda's disturbing cinematic vision of terror and frightening ferocity to altogether new spheres. The follow up to the band's acclaimed debut Pheromone, Summon is described as "the aural equivalent of a Takashi Miike film translated into doom metal." The album is an artful time-stretching opus that morphs through a vast cornucopia of both darkened sound and disturbing tone.

Summon will be issued as a two-disc, CD/DVD release; the DVD bringing to life an abstract visual interpretation of the 20-plus minute Bloody Panda track "Miserere." Filmed in various Brooklyn locales and coupled with footage captured in Jatiluhur Dam, Indonesia, this optic translation is a very dark and mysterious offering that features world-renowned Butoh dancer Yuko Kaseki. "Miserere" was shot and edited by Bloody Panda's Bryan Camphire, Blake McDowell and Josh Rothenberger, all of whom are also New York City based filmmakers.

"Summon spans two years of work -- not just songwriting and recording, but also collaborations with different percussionists, studios, guest musicians, dancers and video artists," comments Bloody Panda guitarist Josh Rothenberger. "The final piece of the puzzle was Profound Lore, a label that has the attention of not only the metal world, but of the experimental art community as well; making it a good home for this release; the most important relic we've given birth to thus far."

The track listing for Bloody Panda's Summon is as follows:

1. Gold
2. Pusher
3. Saccades I
4. Saccades II
5. Miserere
6. Grey
7. Hashira

An excerpt from the new Bloody Panda track "Miserere" can be digested here.

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Tags:  Bloody Panda, Profoundlore Records, Yoshiko Ohara  

jason    July 01, 2009