(written by Islander)
Mind Prisoner came together in Portland, Oregon, but their members are now continentally separated between Oregon and South Carolina. Following a handful of demos and an EP, the band released their debut album The Color of Ruin almost exactly one year ago. Our Andy Synn wrote here that it “made one hell of an impression” on him after finally hearing it, using “an array of Black Metal, Post-Black Metal, and Blackened Doom influences” to create experiences that were “dark and desolate,” “bleak yet beautiful,” “bitter” and “biting,” “terrifying” and “tormented.” He closed by suggesting “that Mind Prisoner haven’t even reached the peak of their powers yet, and we should all make sure to watch them very closely in the future!”
We’ve followed that advice, and what the future has now brought us is a new Mind Prisoner album named Less Faith that’s due for release tomorrow — November 28th. It displays a stylistic shift from their first full-length, accurately summarized by their label as “post-black metal with elements of doom, post-punk, and gothic rock,” but as you’ll discover for yourselves through our full streaming premiere of the new record, many of the adjectives that Andy used in describing the first album still apply.
All three members of Mind Prisoner contribute vocals on the new album, and guest vocalists also contribute to two of the songs. The varying vocal textures are significant factors in the songs’ changing moods. They include sky-high celestial choirs and bestial roars, deep and solemn male choral voices but also tormented screams and furious snarls.
But it’s not just the vocals that make the songs so shapeshifting and mood-altering. The surrounding music is also a study in contrasts — contrasts that create amalgams of ferocity and anger, of heavy abrasion and gossamer lightness, of passionate hopefulness and stirring beauty.
As the album opens, Mind Prisoner set the stage with a brief and unsettling overture called “Funeral“, an introduction that’s chilling and haunting, and then follow that with “Years Gone“, the first single that surfaced from the album.
It lays out some of the dramatic contrasts (but not all of them) that the album encompasses — ethereal and shimmering tones in the clouds and sounds of crackling abrasion and throbbing heaviness in the earth below; slow and steady beats and bursts of furious blasting; serrated-edge gutturals and rabid howls; overlays of near-symphonic magnificence and poignantly wailing melodies that are flute-like; musing bass notes and baritone choral singing steeped in sorrow.
Through the interweaving of all these ingredients and stylistic textures Mind Prisoner create a mesmerizing experience that’s simultaneously tortured and heart-breaking, by turns pulse-pounding and meditative. The vocals seem to rage but also to mourn. The stratospheric melodies seem to provide glimpses of a better place, but everything else leaves doubt that it will ever be reached.
“Nether” comes next, and it’s the album’s longest song. Here, the contrasts include misty sonic sheens and bright, rippling guitars that seem forlorn and yearning, as well as wailed singing with a post-punk vibe, but also scalding growls and a growling bass. They further include high-arcing falsetto vocals and battering percussion; but also feverish bass-lines and flights of synths that sparkle and spread a vast shine.
If there’s an overarching through-line to “Years Gone” and “Nether“, it’s the juxtaposition of loneliness and sadness, but also anger, desire, imagination, and a grasping for something like hope.
On the other hand, “Wound” is much more frightening, with a different kind of juxtaposition — between dour but warped singing and frenzied fretwork, augmented by furious blast-beats, fang-bared howls, and blistering riffage. Even the song’s bounding post-punk beats don’t make it less scary.
“Gradient” (a song we premiered) makes another shift, immediately turning up the intensity dial but also backing off into unearthly phases of cosmic drift enhanced by glittering tremolo’d chords. The song is furious and blazing, and includes some of the album’s most cacophonous harsh vocals, all of that geared toward sending listeners’ hearts into their throats, but it also casts spells of wonder.
“Memories” is one of the two songs that includes guest vocals, and the other is “Bleed“. In the former, Zenona Banks joins in a doom harmony that creates a haunted, mournful, and soulful presence in the midst of another racing (and jolting) sonic blaze, while in the latter the singing of I See Satan Fall Like Lightning brings heart-break into a song that begins gently but seems to flower into rage and despair (it might also be the album’s most-hard-slugging song, and also one of its most convulsive, though it also includes a moody bass solo).
At the end, “Less Faith” again pulls together a lot of Mind Prisoner’s vocal and instrumental contrasts, and a lot of push and pull in intensity, but there’s not really any hopefulness in the moods here. Even though it climbs toward breathtaking heights, it also descends into gloom and undergoes white-hot seizures of pain.
And that’s probably as it should be for an album that makes lots of twists and turns, many of them electrifying, but always seems to continue finding disappointment and sorrow just around the next bend. And while the album includes music that could have been “radio friendly” in the hands of a different band, this one is more interested in confrontation, in channeling things that hurt and in shaking up listeners out of their comfort zones than in lulling them.
And now you can hear it all for yourselves. We have two ways to do that, depending on your preference in players:
MIND PRISONER is:
Griffin Campbell – vocals, lyrics, guitars, drum programming
Thomas Night – vocals, lyrics, sound design, synth programming
Alan Brucke – bass, guitars, vocals, lyrics, drum programming, noise
As mentioned, the album includes guest vocals by Zenona Banks on “Memories”, and by I See Satan Fall Like Lightning on “Bleed”. The band notes that the song “Wound” was inspired by “Crawlspace” by Blessure Grave, original lyrics and melodies by Mind Prisoner.
Less Faith was produced by Mind Prisoner and it was mixed and mastered by Alan Brucke at Hanging Puppet Audio. The album’s cover art is the work of CVSPE, with layouts by CVSPE and Isolation Club.
Violet Hour Transmissions and Isolation Club are releasing the album on November 28th, in variant vinyl formats and on colorful cassette tape, as well as digitally. It’s available for pre-order on Mind Prisoner’s Bandcamp page.
PRE-ORDER:
https://mindprisoner.bandcamp.com/album/less-faith