After the early good quality classic guitar-driven post-punk outcomes around the end of 2017, Ex-Heir, the moniker of Bay Area‘s artist John Anton Malinowskj, never stopped diving into visceral and confrontational synthetic realms and propagating raw, menacing and fierce digital mutant body music, injected with an unmistakable DIY Punk attitude and haunted by cerebral lyrical dystopia, whose wrenching and expressive sound fabric nods to the groundbreaking heritage of Suicide, D.A.F, Coil, Fad Gadget, Swans, and Front 242 to name a few.
Operating in an industrial-encrusted sound space, the Californian artist belches out a convulsive mix of minimal, contorted, EBM-charged synth-punk, alternated at times with ritualistic improvisational experimentation, whose inward relentless gloom and heartfelt forlorn emotions, aching to rant out, cling unyieldingly to a turbulent simmering underpinning of bleak hypnotic pounding rhythms, jerky buzzing low-end grooves and frosty alienating synth riffs, lurching between vicious sensuality and crooked schizophrenia, stacked with dangerous, distorted yet tantalising dancing edges.
Possibly the most excruciating and gripping cut from Ex-Heir‘s latest 5-track EP “Not Yet”, “Sworn (Time Bomb)” forces dirty industrial filth into urgent flickering, droning bass lines, pounding kicks, metallic, lashing snares and sinister whispered obsessive and distorted vocals to inject breathless menace, haunted echoes, and excruciating shrieks into relentless momentums of rolling metallic clanks constructing a dark, dangerous, and mysterious domain where wicked lyrics drip disdain and disgust into a distorted reality of deception and hypocrisy to inflict seething anger and forlorn distrust into tenebrous shadows of impending doom.
A soundtrack for murky dungeons and strobing club corners, to thrill introvert dancing spines and whip sweaty flesh born psychosis.
Ex-Heir‘s 5-track EP “Not Yet” is out now on Bandcamp.
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