Artificial Brain have named their next album Antillia and put out a song from it called Quantum Malignancies. Stereogum reports the announcement, describing the band's sound as guttural but cosmic, which is a fair summary of a group that has spent more than a decade pushing death metal towards science fiction rather than towards gore.
The band has changed shape repeatedly over that decade. They were once an international outfit built around a New York base, with members scattered enough that assembling a lineup was a logistical exercise. That arrangement has been replaced by something considerably more concentrated.
Artificial Brain are now based in Richmond, Virginia, a city that has become one of the deepest wells of heavy underground music in the United States, and the move has changed the personnel as much as the postcode. Mike Paparo, the vocalist in Inter Arma, and Alex Tomlin, the drummer in Battlemaster, both came into the band after the relocation.
Paparo's arrival is the detail with the most weight in it. Inter Arma are one of Richmond's defining bands, working at the slow, enormous end of heavy music, and his voice carries a different kind of authority than a straight death metal growl. Putting him in front of a band whose subject matter runs to deep space and machine intelligence is a specific choice rather than a convenient one.
Quantum Malignancies is the first music from the record, and its title keeps to the band's established register: a physics word and a medical one, welded together into something that sounds like a diagnosis for a galaxy. No release date or label has been given for Antillia.
Richmond's gravity is the wider story here. A band that once spread itself across continents has ended up in a mid-sized Virginia city because that is where the players, the studios and the rooms are, which is a pattern repeating across American heavy music. Inter Arma themselves have been out marking two decades, having announced a 20th anniversary US tour earlier this year. Our release calendar tracks the records with dates on them, and the metal hub carries the week's other announcements, including New World Man's debut I Am The Machine.
The facts
- Artificial Brain have announced an album called Antillia.
- The song Quantum Malignancies is out now.
- The band are now based in Richmond, Virginia.
- They were formerly an international band with a New York base.
- Inter Arma vocalist Mike Paparo is now in the lineup.
- Battlemaster drummer Alex Tomlin also joined after the move.
- The band have been playing death metal for more than a decade.
- No release date or label has been given for Antillia.
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